Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

Love is unknown. To open the heart in trust is unknown. They say love hurts. It doesn't have to.

I am a pretty emotional person. Any act of kindness or unkindness moves me. When I see a romantic couple sitting by the beach, it moves me. I don't break down or crack under pressure, but I am just sensitive.

Live your life fom your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people's souls.

Human emotion is more interesting than anything. Everything that is so overtly sexual is not real. Real emotion is sexy. It's vulnerable and raw.

I have a lot of people in my life, and I think there's something key: the thing that leads to intimacy and relationship and connection is tenderness.

I'm kind of a warrior for love, and I wear my heart on my sleeve.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

Imagine you are walking in the woods and you see a small dog sitting by a tree. As you approach it, it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. You are frightened and angry. But then you notice that one of its legs is caught in a trap. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern: You see that the dog's aggression is coming from a place of vulnerability and pain. This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of trap. The more we look through the eyes of wisdom at ourselves and one another, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart.

Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.

sorrow...is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it

It's an odd thing about love. When someone you love cries, your heart melts. But when someone you don't love cries, you look at them and think, Why are you telling 'me' this?

We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones.

There's no bad consequence to loving fully, with all your heart. You always gain by giving love.

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a little brotherhood.

I was sitting by Dr. Franklin who perceived that I was not insensitive to these mutilations.

You don’t address their brains. You address their hearts.

I think half or almost all of the pain in the world … is people not feeling seen. It’s like Mr. Rogers, my hero, says: “Love is the root of everything … love or the lack of it.”

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

My biggest lesson I've learned about love is to keep on loving. Love is love; it's amazing. It's fine. It hurts. It's probably one of the best experiences in life.

I do feel that softness for the vulnerability and the innocence in our world, including my own.

If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.

I approach these people from a standpoint of love. How were they loved? How do they love? What's going on in their heart? There's that that I think about with every role.

I'm not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they're going through. I don't know if that's the healthiest thing, but it's the truth.

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people, they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.