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

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Terry Tempest Williams
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: September 8
Author
Essayist
Historian
Memoirist
Poet
Writer
Corona
California
Experience
Creates
Stories
Structure
Truth
Terms
Life
Style
Like
Grows
Term
Organically
Story
Chapters
Voice
Inherent

More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

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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
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I can only say that I believe the Mormon Church is changing because the people inside the church are changing, particularly, the women. And if the women in the Mormon Church are changing, that means the men in the Mormon Church will change - slowly, reluctantly to be sure, but inevitably.
Terry Tempest Williams
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I believe every woman should own at least one pair of red shoes.
Terry Tempest Williams
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We write out of our humanity by writing through our direct experience. That which is most personal is most general, which becomes both our insight and protection as a writers. This is our authority as women, as human beings.
Terry Tempest Williams
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To engage in civil disobedience is to feel the abundance of courage, the gratitude for a democracy that still invites us to speak from our hearts, to act from our conscience and have faith in the consequences of moral action. Abundance is a form of consciousness.
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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Agitation gives birth to creation.
Terry Tempest Williams
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If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.
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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Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them.
Terry Tempest Williams
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There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.
Terry Tempest Williams
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Our correspondences have wings - paper birds that fly from my house to yours - flocks of ideas crisscrossing the country. Once opened, a connection is made. We are not alone in the world.
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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Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
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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The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering.
Terry Tempest Williams
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That is the wonderful ecological mind that Gregory Bateson talks about - the patterns that connect, the stories that inform and inspire us and teach us what is possible
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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We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have.
Terry Tempest Williams