Quotes from Terry Tempest Williams

We usually recognize a beginning. Endings are more difficult to detect. Most often, they are realized only after reflection. Silence. We are seldom conscious when silence begins—it is only afterward that we realize what we have been a part of. In the night journeys of Canada geese, it is the silence that propels them. Thomas Merton writes, "Silence is the strength of our interior life.… If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.

We are wearing coats of trust. When one tells a story this is what happens.

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together

Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf 's tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.

CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.

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

Mythmaking is the evolutionary enterprise of translating truths.

Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from both is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges.

Wilderness is not a place of isolation but contemplation. Refuge. Refugees.....Wilderness is a knife that cuts through pretense and exposes fear. Even in remote country, you cannot escape your mind.

Your voice is the wildest thing you own," Brooke says to me. "And you're giving it away. You can't see it. Your obsession is blinding you." He is angry. He is talking in shorthand. "You're losing yourself.

What needs to be counted on to have a voice? Courage. Anger. Love. Something to say; someone to speak to; someone to listen. I have talked to myself for years in the privacy of my journals.

Reading has not only changed my life but saved it. the right picked at the right time—especially the one that scares us, threatens to undermine all we have been told, the one that contains forbidden thoughts—these are the books that become Eve's apples.

Agitation gives birth to creation.

memory is the only way home.

Boundaries are fears made manifest, designed to protect us. I don't want protection, I want freedom.

My grandmother simply shook her head and said, You know what you saw. The bird doesn't need to be counted, and neither do you.

What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?

It is not possible to satisfy women, a friend said. We are disturbed if we have children too young. Disturbed if we have then later. Disturbed if we don't have children at all.

Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect so much from 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. And the energy we expend emotionally belongs to the hidden side of the moon.

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.

There becomes little doubt as to why power chooses to support power. Rwanda becomes invisible once again. We have nothing America wants.

I speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson's snipe, Forster's tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels.

Our ability to travel is a privilege. But it is also a choice. Money is time. Where do we spend out time? Wilderness is not my leisure or my recreation. It is my sanity.

Her body was rounded like earth. Stories. Breath. . . . Her eyes have been painted closed. I understand. To tell a story you must travel inward.