Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Night is the mother of counsels.

When I was in lower school, I graduated from fourth grade, and the principal gave us a summer assignment to take a 30-minute reflection period every day. And, of course, there were no cell phones at the time. She said to just think. And that's lost. It doesn't exist anymore. Just imagine being on a couch and just thinking.

Some of the most powerful times are when we're quiet.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

Think a lot, say little, and write nothing.

Silence is the most powerful state.

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can't hear, and not bothering.

'Silence,' I think, was the hardest, because it's so different from everything we've done before and required very delicate handling and trying to find the right meditative pace.

The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars.

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

The price of seeing is silence.

Silence is an endangered quantity in our time... Silence, embraced, stuns with its presence, its pregnant reality—a reality that does not negate reason and argument, but puts them in their place.

I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.

Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.

Coming before God in quietness & waiting upon Him in silence often can accomplish more than days of feverish activity.

Take time to be quiet.

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.

The beginning of prayer is silence.

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.