Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are you sad with some happy days? Are you neat with some sloppy ways? Or are you sloppy with some neat ways? And on and on and on and on and on and on he went. I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.

I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time. I don't think it's one motion unfortunately - I wish we could say it's better, better, better - but I think it's better, bad, better, bad - you know?

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?'

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

I don't see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.

The world's a mean place. It's unfair, then it's fair. It's hateful, then it's loving. It's a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical.

When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'

Being human is being a lot of things at the same time.

We are, all of us, incoherent text, and just knowing that - knowing that no matter how much you say, 'I am this' and part of you is not that - means that you can say it.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

There are gray areas in everything.

All of us, we are not one thing: we're always between two worlds, and the idea of not being sure is very appealing to me.

It's very human to try to put things into boxes, and it's hard for us to reconcile with grey areas, and yet somehow, that's the area I find the most poetic, the juiciest.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

You think that would have changed things? The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.

I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing.

In the essence of truth lies deceit.