Quote

Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

Terry Tempest Williams

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Terry Tempest Williams
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: September 8
Author
Essayist
Historian
Memoirist
Poet
Writer
Corona
California
Understanding
Modernity
Chance
Imagined
Beautiful
Context
Live
Curse
Without
Flesh
Real
Shadow
World
Perspective
Distinguishing
Judgment
Manipulated

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

Image
Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human? Perfection is a flaw disguised as control.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Democracy is an insecure landscape.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I would say I am at peace with the mystery of my mother's journals. Of course, I will always wonder, but isn't that the creative tension of living with uncertainty? By leaving me her empty journals, my mother has made herself very present.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I come from a culture that embodies the need to convert others to the truth. The Mormon Church has one of the largest missionary programs in the world. That does not interest me.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Style is like voice, it grows organically from the truth of one's own life experience. Not in terms of chapters, per se, but in terms of stories. It is the story itself that creates an inherent structure.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
There are times we have to put our body on the line for what we believe, for the injustices we see even within our own families.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Storytelling is the oldest form of education.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I can't imagine a secular life, a spiritual life, an intellectual life, a physical life. I mean, we would be completely wrought with schizophrenia, wouldn't we?
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The question I'm constantly asking myself is: what are we afraid of? I think it's important for us to follow that line of fear, because that is ultimately our line of growth.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Every time we make love to a human being, fully, we are making love to everything that lives and breathes. In that sense it becomes communion. It is a sacrament.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The only thing I have done religiously in my life is keep a journal. I have hundreds of them, filled with feathers, flowers, photographs, and words - without locks, open on my shelves.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I'm outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer - in hibernation. I write with the bears.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
We can try to kill all that is native, string it up by its hind legs for all to see, but spirit howls and wildness endures.
Terry Tempest Williams