Quotes from Terry Tempest Williams

When I said, "I am my mother, but I'm not," I was saying my path would be my own.

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.

We forget the nature of true power. The power within is abundance. The power without is greed.

I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.

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.

Our power lies in our love of our homelands.

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.

I still have great faith in democracy. I have great belief in the power of community.

Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.

Home is where we have a history.

memory is the only way home.

I really do believe if there is hope in the world, then it is to be found within our own communities with our own neighbors, and within our own homes and families.

When Emily Dickinson writes, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul," she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

Hope is not attached to outcomes but is a state of mind.

Despair shows us the limit of our imagination. Imaginations shared create collaboration, collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.

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.

An individual doesn't get cancer, a family does.

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.

Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us.

Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. After the listening you become accountable for the sacred knowledge that has been shared.

It was fascinating listening to this wonderful biologist, Sarah Allen Miller, speak of her relationship to these beings for 20 years.

Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.