Quote

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

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
Always
Revelatory
Disclosure
Private
Art
Beautiful
Writing

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

Image
To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Not everything is meant for all to hear.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I am slowly, painfully discovering that my refuge is not found in my mother, my grandmother, of even the birds of Bear River. My refuge exists in my capacity to love. If I can learn to love death then I can begin to find refuge in change.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Sometimes you have to disclaim your country and inhabit another before you can return to your own.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.
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
Landscape shapes culture
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
What is private belongs to me alone. What is personal belongs to all of us through the shared experience of being human.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Downwinders, meaning those people, individuals, communities that were downwind of the nuclear test site. During those years when we were testing atomic bombs above ground, when we watched them for entertainment from the roofs of our high schools, little did we know what was raining down on us, little did we know what would appear years later.
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
Storytelling is the oldest form of education.
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
I can only say that I believe the Mormon Church is changing because the people inside the church are changing, particularly, the women. And if the women in the Mormon Church are changing, that means the men in the Mormon Church will change - slowly, reluctantly to be sure, but inevitably.
Terry Tempest Williams