Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

It's more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.

I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.

The majority of my job is being an open channel, and if I'm not being very authentic with who I am in myself, then it doesn't feel like I can dig down deep and get to really vulnerable stuff, or stuff I have never felt before.

When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.

Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

When most people looked at Josie Tyrell, they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. But Michael saw past the mouth and the eyes, the architecture of the body, her fleshly masquerade. Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self. But what good was it if he was just going to leave her behind?

...losing through you what seemed myself, i find selves unimaginably mine; beyond sorrow's own joys and hopings very fears yours is the light by which my spirit's born: yours is the darkness of my soul's return... you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

Those doing soul work, who want the searing truth more than solace or applause, know each other right away. Those who want something else turn and take a seat in another room. Soul-makers find each other’s company.

If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

When I hear of people who weary of each other, I believe it is because they have sought virtues in themselves alone, attractions of physical beauty. Have they based their love on each other's thoughts? Who can weary of thoughts which change every day?

I was the place where you anchored. I was the deep water where you could be weightless. I was the surface where you saw your own reflection. You scooped me up in your hands.

As love is union, it knows no extremes of distance.

In true love it is the soul that envelops the body.

Powerful is our need to be known, really known by ourselves and others, even if only for a moment.

When someone who's been homeless and actually had to take meals on the handout or steal purses on the backs of park benches to be able to eat, not that that was right. My head was definitely not in the right place when I was out there using but when you share your greatest weaknesses and the most intimate parts of your story, I think it makes a real impact on people. I think what comes from the heart reaches the heart.

Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person.

Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.

My involvement is an extension of who I am as a person. I have found a sense of renewal and peace when I allow myself to be open to create, give, and fully participate in things that call me to respond from my core.

Love isn't material. It's energy... We experience it as kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment, joining and intimacy.

You don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't.

My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am.

It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.

Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable.