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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.

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
Done
Flowers
Thing
Photograph
Religiously
Life
Filled
Feathers
Flower
Shelves
Open
Locks
Words
Journal
Keep
Photographs
Without
Hundreds

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

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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.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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.
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If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.
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For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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.
Terry Tempest Williams
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What I mean by An Unspoken Hunger. It's a hunger that cannot be quelled by material things. It's a hunger that cannot be quelled by the constant denial.
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This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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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I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.
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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I think the whole idea of home is central to who we are as human beings.
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.
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Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
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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Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.
Terry Tempest Williams
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We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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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