Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

You don't have anything if you don't have the stories.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

I think, for me, I have to remember that I'm telling a story in some way.

We don't only tell stories when we set out to tell stories, our memory tells us stories. That is, what we get to keep from our experiences is a story.

Storytelling is the important thing.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.

When I was a little kid, I told stories.

I'm trying to make perfect moments. And those generate meaning. If you go deep enough in how to make a moment, very quickly you come to how narrative works - to what we are as a species, how we've come up with telling stories in scenes and images.

Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Stories are told over time, and so they naturally accrue meanings.

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel

I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.

We are surrounded by story.

I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.

Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.

I hate to think that all my current experiences will someday become stories with no point.

Every story we remember is a novel. Novels make things more universal.

I don't know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story, or to listen to a story. They're the only thing we have that can trump life itself.

Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.

That's all that really matters in the end. Stories.

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.