I believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature. Terry Tempest Williams More Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams More Quotes From Terry Tempest Williams What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences. Terry Tempest Williams enteringnarrativeattention The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world. Terry Tempest Williams diversitycreativitymaking-love Abundance is a dance with reciprocity - what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process. Terry Tempest Williams abundancesharegiving My heart breaks living in southern Utah on the edge of America's Redrock Wilderness, witnessing what the Bush Administration's policies regarding oil and gas exploitation are doing to our public lands that belong to all Americans. Their policy is not about the public or the public's best interest. It is about the oil and gas corporations' best interests. The Secretary of the Interior is urging the Bureau of Land Management to support the gas and oil industry's most extreme drilling scenario in some of the American West's most pristine and fragile areas without proper legal and public input. Terry Tempest Williams supportsouthernheart Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community. Terry Tempest Williams communitystoriesinspire Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored. Terry Tempest Williams ritualformulasharmony I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now:... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged. Terry Tempest Williams naturerealthinking What every woman knows is that we are remade each time we make love, each time we give birth; each time we feel the blood making its way through our body into our cupped hands, we remember it is our destiny to make change. Terry Tempest Williams destinyhandsblood The act of civil disobedience is the act of taking our anger and turning it into sacred rage. It is a personal and collective gesture of resistance and insistance. Terry Tempest Williams gesturessacredresistance I think Barack Obama has been a terrible disappointment environmentally. It's very sobering to realize, as a westerner, that under the Obama administration, we now have more active oil and gas leases on public lands than Americans ever did. Obama has been worse. Terry Tempest Williams realizingdisappointmentthinking Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace. Terry Tempest Williams wildernesssilencegrace When you look at the Pueblo communities along the Rio Grande, when you talk to the Navajo people, the Ute people, and certainly the native peoples of California who still have their communities intact, it is what they have always known: that we are not apart from nature but a part of it. Terry Tempest Williams californiacommunitypeople There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private. Terry Tempest Williams writingbeautifulart 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 focussensualpaper To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice. Terry Tempest Williams askslittles 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. Terry Tempest Williams namesintegritygiving No separation between the spiritual and the physical. It is all one. Terry Tempest Williams separationspiritual The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power Terry Tempest Williams vulnerablepathheart 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 magiclastsmay Water is nothing if not ingemination, an encore to the tenacity of life. Terry Tempest Williams encorestenacitywater
