Quote

I will never be able to say what is in my heart because words fail us, because it is in our nature to protect, because there are times when what is public and what is private must be discerned.

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
Protect
Never
Public
Times
Words
Nature
Discerned
Fail
Able
Private
Must
Failing
Heart

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

Image
When one woman doesn't speak, other women get hurt.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I think wherever we are, we can create an atmosphere of openness and trust, where women and those who feel marginalized feel safe to speak the truth of their lives.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Creativity ignited a spark. In that moment, I saw that art is not peripheral, beauty is not optional, but a strategy for survival.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand. Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation -- teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Not everything is meant for all to hear.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I write from the place of inquiry. The first draft is a discovery period to see what I know and what I don't know. My task is simply to follow the words. There are surprises along the way. I just have to get it down. Call it the sculptor's clay.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Greed is a deprivation of abundance, a hoarding, a constriction of energy.
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
Lanscape shapes culture.
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
I believe every woman should own at least one pair of red shoes.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I remember as a child, my grandmother read to me Silent Spring. It was incomprehensible to me that there could be a world without birdsong.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
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
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
Image
I live in a very, very quiet place. 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