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.
BARRY LOPEZWould the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?
More Barry Lopez Quotes
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The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of the exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by the land as it is by genes.
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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.
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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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In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.
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The land gets inside of us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it.
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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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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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Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
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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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The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
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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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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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For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.
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To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.
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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