Terry Tempest Williams

My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.

Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

I grew up in a culture in which it was a sin for a woman to speak out.

Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free.

If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.... This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

What every woman knows is that we are remade each time we make love, each time we give birth; each time we feel the blood making its way through our body into our cupped hands, we remember it is our destiny to make change.

I feel like we are at a time of great creativity if we choose to embrace it as such, if we choose to engage the will of our imaginations and imagine another way of being in the world.

Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?

Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.

Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.

Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.