Not everything is meant for all to hear.

— Terry Tempest Williams

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

— Terry Tempest Williams

Once you know that you have a voice,” Louis said, “it’s no longer the voice that matters, but what is behind the voice.

— Terry Tempest Williams

Respect is primary.

— Terry Tempest Williams

Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from both is that we be still. We focus. We listen. Furthermore, we see and we hear. The unexpected emerges.

— Terry Tempest Williams

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.

— Terry Tempest Williams

Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . It transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are. A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.

— Terry Tempest Williams

The courage to continue before the face of despair is the recognition in those eyes of darkness we find our own night vision. Women blessed with death-eyes are fearless.

— Terry Tempest Williams

The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.

— Terry Tempest Williams

The eyes of the future are looking back at us, and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.

— Terry Tempest Williams