People think that if you’ve written a book and somebody’s given you a pat on the back then, you know, it’s all – you’re all settled, you know? You’re going to be fine. I know that if I’m not confused, and really afraid, my work isn’t going to be any good.
BARRY LOPEZWhen I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I’m trying to do. I’m frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.
More Barry Lopez Quotes
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The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
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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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You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
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When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I’m trying to do. I’m frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.
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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.
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It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
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Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
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The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
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My function as a writer is to provide an atmosphere in which people can think wisely about what we’re doing on this planet.
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The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis.
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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?
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Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
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There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
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If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.
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One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
BARRY LOPEZ






