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Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

Barry Lopez

You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
BARRY LOPEZ

Expression Inspirational Life Light
The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
BARRY LOPEZ

Intelligence Love Reason
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

Land Mean Way
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

Adults Inspirational Life Responsibility
It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
BARRY LOPEZ

Giving Imagination Wise
My function as a writer is to provide an atmosphere in which people can think wisely about what we’re doing on this planet.
BARRY LOPEZ

Atmosphere People Thinking
I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
BARRY LOPEZ

Heart Inspirational Soul
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

Consideration Human Land Life
The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
BARRY LOPEZ

Hate Love Opposites
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.
BARRY LOPEZ

Character Land Mind
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 LOPEZ

Book Confused Thinking
Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
BARRY LOPEZ

Compassion Heart Love
In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.
BARRY LOPEZ

Fall Ignorance Land
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 LOPEZ

Looks Stories Writing
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.
BARRY LOPEZ

Calling Helping World
The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis.
BARRY LOPEZ

Apples Attempt Gap Temptation
There’s so much to be afraid of.
BARRY LOPEZ

Afraid Ashamed Much
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
BARRY LOPEZ

Inspire Needs Story
The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.
BARRY LOPEZ

Gaze Reach Soul Wolf
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

Animal Doe Men
We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.
BARRY LOPEZ

Admit Courage Place Universe
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

Stories Trying Typewriters
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.
BARRY LOPEZ

Long People Trying
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 LOPEZ

Inspirational Motivational Struggle
One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
BARRY LOPEZ

Contradiction Inspirational Life Middle
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

Animal Blood Eerie
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
BARRY LOPEZ

Answers Inspirational Life

Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

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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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Popular Authors

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