Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams, is an American author, conservationist and activist. Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of her native Utah and its Mormon culture. Her work ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth8 September 1955
CountryUnited States of America
letting-go mother art
I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.
focus sensual paper
There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.
heart soul earth
The time had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one's genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against one's soul.
lakes salt taught
We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have.
heart community mormonism
At the heart of Mormonism is a high regard for community. That is its strength. I have great respect for that.
Not everything is meant for all to hear.
choices silence censorship
When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.
people mind earth
People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand--what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for--Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.
voice fields born
My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.
land priorities survival
In the early days of the Mormon Church, stewardship toward the land was a priority. It was a matter of survival in the desert.
moving empowering suffering
Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free.
book writing
The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.
creativity imagination world
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.
cancer believe writing
I write about nuclear tests in Refuge - "The Clan of One-Breasted Women." With so many of the women in my family being diagnosed with breast cancer, mastectomies led to one-breasted women. I believe it is the result of nuclear fallout.