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Whatever artistry may occur within the manuscript, the magic happens for me in the last draft. Whatever I have been resistant to say must finally be said. In the end, I see where my pencil has been leading me.

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
Must
Magic
Manuscripts
Within
Artistry
Whatever
Pencil
Lasts
Draft
Last
Pencils
Happens
Occur
Ends
Leading
Resistant
May
Finally
Manuscript

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I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
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Greed is a deprivation of abundance, a hoarding, a constriction of energy.
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I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.
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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
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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.
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Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase.
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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.
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I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.
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Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does.
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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.
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Good writing must stay open to the questions and not fall prey to the pull of a polemic, otherwise, words simply become predictable, sentimental, and stale.
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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.
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If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently.
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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.
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But, today, the idea of faith returns to me. Faith defies logic and propels us beyond hope because it is not attached to our desires. Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.
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As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
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I know the struggle from the inside out and I would never be so bold as to call myself a writer. I think that is what other people call you. But I consider myself a member of a community in Salt Lake City, in Utah, in the American West, in this country. And writing is what I do. That is the tool out of which I can express my love.
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Not everything is meant for all to hear.
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Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.
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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.
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