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 LOPEZEverything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
More Barry Lopez Quotes
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The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
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My faith is in my colleagues. And when I meet other writers, journalists, who’ve been doing this for a long time, trying to make us aware of what it is that we’re living in, I put my faith in those people.
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Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
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If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
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One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.
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It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
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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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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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I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
BARRY LOPEZ -
You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
BARRY LOPEZ -
Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
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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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There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
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I lay there knowing something eerie ties us to the world of animals. Sometimes the animals pull you backward into it. You share hunger and fear with them like salt in blood.
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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?
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
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The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
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The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.
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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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One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
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The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
BARRY LOPEZ -
We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.
BARRY LOPEZ -
There’s so much to be afraid of.
BARRY LOPEZ