Quote

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

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
Story
Chapters
Voice
Inherent
Experience
Creates
Stories
Structure
Truth
Terms
Life
Style
Like
Grows
Term
Organically

More quotes by 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
What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
I would say I am at peace with the mystery of my mother's journals. Of course, I will always wonder, but isn't that the creative tension of living with uncertainty? By leaving me her empty journals, my mother has made herself very present.
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
The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.
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
We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say No, we are not rolling over and No, this is not a corporate enterprise. This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
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
Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Hope is not attached to outcomes but is a state of mind.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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
Image
Revolution is not something outside of us, but inside us, begging for our engagement every single day.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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
Image
Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human? Perfection is a flaw disguised as control.
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 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
Not everything is meant for all to hear.
Terry Tempest Williams
Image
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