Quote

A mother and daughter are an edge. Edges are ecotones, transitional zones, places of danger or opportunity. House-dwelling tension. When I stand on the edge of the land and sea, I feel this tension, this fluid line of transition. High tide. Low tide. It is the sea's reach and retreat that reminds me we have been human for only a very short time.

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
House
Short
Tension
Tide
Mother
Line
Zone
Dwelling
Human
Danger
Edges
Fluid
Humans
Stand
Lows
Reminds
Feel
Land
Sea
Tides
Feels
Lines
Daughter
Retreat
Time
High
Reach
Transition
Transitional
Opportunity
Places
Edge
Zones

More quotes by 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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I wonder how, among the Fremont, mothers and daughters shared their world. Did they walk side by side along the lake edge? What stories did they tell while weaving strips of bulrush into baskets? How did daughters bury their mothers and exercise their grief? What were the secret rituals of women? I feel certain they must have been tied to birds.
Terry Tempest Williams
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The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Not everything is meant for all to hear.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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
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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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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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What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
Terry Tempest Williams
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How do we create beauty in a broken world? How do we create a view of sustainability in an economy that is crashing? How do we reconfigure our lives, how do we pick up the pieces and create a meaningful life? So, yes, we have a different form of leadership but the questions remain the same.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Democracy is an insecure landscape.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Landscape shapes culture
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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Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.
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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Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
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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Agitation gives birth to creation.
Terry Tempest Williams
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I think that the only thing that can bring us into a place of fullness is being out in the land with other. Then we remember where the source of our power lies.
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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As children, we had access to all the open space imaginable. We would set up camps in rural Utah where the Tempest Company was at work laying pipe. We spent time around the West in Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado. Wild beautiful places. Now, many of these natural places have disappeared under the press of development.
Terry Tempest Williams