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When one of us says 'look, there is nothing out there,' what we are really saying is, 'I cannot see'.

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
Says
Saying
Cannot
Look
Nothing
Looks
Really

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In Utah alone, ten million acres are open for business. Their policy is not about the public or the public's best interest. It is about the oil and gas corporations' best interests.
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Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning.
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This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
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The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering.
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We mask our needs as the needs of others.
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The climate change movement is a river overflowing seeping into every nook and cranny.
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Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.
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I don't set boundaries for myself when I am writing if I did, I would be paralyzed from the start, unable to write a word on the page.
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I know the struggle from the inside out and I would never be so bold as to call myself a writer. I think that is what other people call you. But I consider myself a member of a community in Salt Lake City, in Utah, in the American West, in this country. And writing is what I do. That is the tool out of which I can express my love.
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It is important to remember all true change begins at the margins and moves toward the center. This does not make the climate change movement marginal, it makes it muscular, organic, with a true movement toward the center.
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Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.
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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.
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Pico Iyer describes his writing as intimate letters to a stranger, and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.
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We write out of our humanity by writing through our direct experience. That which is most personal is most general, which becomes both our insight and protection as a writers. This is our authority as women, as human beings.
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Not everything is meant for all to hear.
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As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
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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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Whatever artistry may occur within the manuscript, the magic happens for me in the last draft. Whatever I have been resistant to say must finally be said. In the end, I see where my pencil has been leading me.
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Hope radiates outward from the center of our concerns. Hope dares us to stare the miraculous in the eye and have the courage not to look away.
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...if we allow ourselves contemplative time in nature-whether it's gardening, going for a walk with the dog, or being in the heart of the southern Utah wilderness-then we can hear the voice of our conscience. If we listen to that voice, it asks us to be conscious. And if we become conscious we choose to live lives of consequence.
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