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 LOPEZIt 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.
More Barry Lopez Quotes
-
-
We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
BARRY LOPEZ -
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
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.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
BARRY LOPEZ -
Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
BARRY LOPEZ -
Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
BARRY LOPEZ -
The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
BARRY LOPEZ -
There’s so much to be afraid of.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 LOPEZ -
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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.
BARRY LOPEZ