Quote

If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

Barry Lopez

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Barry Lopez
Age: 75 †
Born: 1945
Born: January 6
Died: 2020
Died: December 25
Author
Photographer
Writer
Port Chester
New York
Barry Holstun Lopez
Truly
Accepts
Accepting
Unfolding
Becomes
Paradox
Stage
Irony
Responsibility
Adult
Individual
Midst
Must
Adults
Life
Lived
Grasps

More quotes by Barry Lopez

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I lay there knowing something eerie ties us to the world of animals. Sometimes the animals pull you backward into it. You share hunger and fear with them like salt in blood.
Barry Lopez
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People think that if you've written a book and somebody's given you a pat on the back then, you know, it's all - you're all settled, you know? You're going to be fine. I know that if I'm not confused, and really afraid, my work isn't going to be any good.
Barry Lopez
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The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
Barry Lopez
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The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard...be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there.
Barry Lopez
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In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.
Barry Lopez
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There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
Barry Lopez
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Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
Barry Lopez
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The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you
Barry Lopez
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My faith is in my colleagues. And when I meet other writers, journalists, who've been doing this for a long time, trying to make us aware of what it is that we're living in, I put my faith in those people.
Barry Lopez
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It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
Barry Lopez
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I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
Barry Lopez
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You can't learn anything from saguaro cactus, from ocotillo. They are just passing through their roots, their much heralded dormancy in the dry season, these are only illusions of permanence. They know even less than you do.
Barry Lopez
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We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone's calling, to lead a life that helps.
Barry Lopez
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One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.
Barry Lopez
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If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
Barry Lopez
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If I were to offer any advice to young writers, it would be this: be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully, and then write thoughtfully, with respect both for the reader and your sources.
Barry Lopez
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No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself.
Barry Lopez
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One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
Barry Lopez
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It does not demean men to want to be what they imagine the wolf to be, but it does demean them to kill the animal for it.
Barry Lopez
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Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall.
Barry Lopez