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We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.

Barry Lopez

My function as a writer is to provide an atmosphere in which people can think wisely about what we’re doing on this planet.
BARRY LOPEZ

Atmosphere People Thinking
It does not demean men to want to be what they imagine the wolf to be, but it does demean them to kill the animal for it.
BARRY LOPEZ

Animal Doe Men
The land gets inside of us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it.
BARRY LOPEZ

Land Mean Way
It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
BARRY LOPEZ

Giving Imagination Wise
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
BARRY LOPEZ

Inspire Needs Story
The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis.
BARRY LOPEZ

Apples Attempt Gap Temptation
You can’t learn anything from saguaro cactus, from ocotillo. They are just passing through; their roots, their much heralded dormancy in the dry season, these are only illusions of permanence. They know even less than you do.
BARRY LOPEZ

Education Learning Time
The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don’t know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It’s not that I’m not interested-it’s not where I live. I live inside the story.
BARRY LOPEZ

Looks Stories Writing
We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone’s calling, to lead a life that helps.
BARRY LOPEZ

Calling Helping World
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
BARRY LOPEZ

Answers Inspirational Life
Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?
BARRY LOPEZ

Animal Forgiving Land
The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you
BARRY LOPEZ

Imagination Influence Powerful
For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.
BARRY LOPEZ

Inspirational Motivational Struggle
Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?
BARRY LOPEZ

Political Rivers Technology
The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
BARRY LOPEZ

Intelligence Love Reason
The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
BARRY LOPEZ

Land Understanding Urges

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.

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We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.

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Popular Authors

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