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I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.

Terry Tempest Williams

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Terry Tempest Williams
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: September 8
Author
Essayist
Historian
Memoirist
Poet
Writer
Corona
California
Fear
Birds
Ends
Pray
Love
Praying
Bird
Listen
Prayer
Teach
Prayers
Rather
Remind

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When I said, I am my mother, but I'm not, I was saying my path would be my own.
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Greed is a deprivation of abundance, a hoarding, a constriction of energy.
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The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.
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I remember a phone call from a friend of mine who lives along the MacKenzie River. She said, This is the first year in twenty that the chinook salmon have not returned. This woman knows the names of things. This woman is committed to a place. And she sounded the alarm.
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When one woman doesn't speak, other women get hurt.
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There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.
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Good writing must stay open to the questions and not fall prey to the pull of a polemic, otherwise, words simply become predictable, sentimental, and stale.
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Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
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I think that the only thing that can bring us into a place of fullness is being out in the land with other. Then we remember where the source of our power lies.
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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.
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Despair shows us the limit of our imagination. Imaginations shared create collaboration, collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.
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There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.
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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.
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Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.
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This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
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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.
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Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.
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There are things within the culture that absolutely enrage me, and for me it is sacred rage. But it's not just peculiar to Mormonism - it's any patriarchy that I think stops, thwarts, or denies our creativity.
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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.
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As children, we had access to all the open space imaginable. We would set up camps in rural Utah where the Tempest Company was at work laying pipe. We spent time around the West in Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado. Wild beautiful places. Now, many of these natural places have disappeared under the press of development.
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