Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

Landscape shapes culture

I understand people want to hold on to their roots.

The greatest guarantee for the preservation of a person’s identity is language and faith, and all Armenians must carry these two values.

We have a unique culture.

Music is part of our culture.

No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition.

Cling to thy native land, for it is the land of thy fathers?

A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?

A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

I love my heritage!

Think about what there is to learn from your heritage, good and bad, and about what you want to cultivate and not cultivate.

You can't run from your roots.

Food is a lens for culture.

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Countries and places have a history, a story, and a culture.

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture.

I love where I'm from. I don't live there because of the circumstances, but all my family is there. It's what's inside, it's not what's outside that determines the culture and the feeling.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.

Throughout history, civilizations have built a common cause through coming-of-age rituals. But we don't do that anymore. Maybe we should think about that.

When you think about your heritage, you think about toughness and hard work.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

I grew up in a wonderful blend of a lot of old culture.