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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

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Terry Tempest Williams
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: September 8
Author
Essayist
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Corona
California
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More quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

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Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.
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.
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The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.
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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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Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?
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There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.
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What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart.
Terry Tempest Williams
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There are things within the culture that absolutely enrage me, and for me it is sacred rage. But it's not just peculiar to Mormonism - it's any patriarchy that I think stops, thwarts, or denies our creativity.
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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Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.
Terry Tempest Williams
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I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.
Terry Tempest Williams
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As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
Terry Tempest Williams
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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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When I said, I am my mother, but I'm not, I was saying my path would be my own.
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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The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.
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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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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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
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I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.
Terry Tempest Williams