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 LOPEZMy 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.
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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There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
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Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?
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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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Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
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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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The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
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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.
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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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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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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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The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you
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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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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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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