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

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
Art
Beautiful
Writing
Always
Revelatory
Disclosure
Private

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

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The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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.
Terry Tempest Williams
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The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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The discipline of writing a memoir comes in the editing. This is where I cut, slash, and burn - where my creative mind is transformed into a ruthless one. No word escapes my scrutiny. It is here where I see what boundaries need to be set.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction.
Terry Tempest Williams
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I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.
Terry Tempest Williams
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If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.... This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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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We are aching to come together and I think it has little to do with liberal or conservative discourse. I think it has to do with increasing disconnection with what is real and soul-serving.
Terry Tempest Williams
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To me, we are in the midst of such broad-scale destruction, both psychically and physically, that the only thing that can threaten the grip, loosen the hold, of economism, I believe, is a discussion of the sacred born out of our regard and compassion and intelligence for the earth and the creatures on the earth.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Our kinship with Earth must be maintained otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out.
Terry Tempest Williams
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When I said, I am my mother, but I'm not, I was saying my path would be my own.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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.
Terry Tempest Williams
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I think that it's too much to take on the world. It's too much to take on Los Angeles. All I can do is to go back home to the canyon where we live and ask the kinds of questions that can make a difference in our neighborhoods.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
Terry Tempest Williams