QuoteProject
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
Wallace Stegner
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Places acquire significance through the memories and stories associated with them.

This quote by Wallace Stegner emphasizes that a location gains its value and identity not merely through its physical existence, but through the events and narratives that unfold there. Whether through history, stories, or monuments, both real and fictional accounts contribute to how we perceive and understand a place, illustrating the power of memory and storytelling in shaping our connection to the world.

Themes

PlaceMemoryHistoryStoriesIdentityNarrative

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech about the importance of preserving local history, this quote can illustrate how places have stories that enrich our communities.

More from Wallace Stegner

That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Wallace StegnerRead
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Wallace StegnerRead
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
Wallace StegnerRead
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Wallace StegnerRead
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Wallace StegnerRead

Similar quotes

Let us not esteem worldly prosperity or adversity as things real or of any moment, but let us live elsewhere, and raise all our attention to Heaven; esteeming sin as the only true evil, and nothing truly good, but virtue which unites us to God.
Gregory Of NazianzusRead
Salvation cannot be bought with the currency of obedience; it is purchased by the blood of the Son of God. Thinking that we can trade our good works for salvation is like buying a plane ticket and then supposing we own the airline. Or thinking that after paying rent for our home, we now hold title to the entire planet earth.
Dieter F. UchtdorfRead
There is no God any more divine than Yourself.
Walt WhitmanRead
The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.
Carl SandburgRead
Life is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal - just dancing and being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.
RajneeshRead
Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.
HomerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.