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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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Barry Lopez
Age: 75 †
Born: 1945
Born: January 6
Died: 2020
Died: December 25
Author
Photographer
Writer
Port Chester
New York
Barry Holstun Lopez
Throughout
Century
Quality
Fear
Projected
Wolf
Despise
Centuries
Qualities

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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.
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I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
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There's so much to be afraid of.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of the exterior landscape the shape of the individual mind is affected by the land as it is by genes.
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One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
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.
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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.
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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.
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The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you
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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.
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There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
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