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 LOPEZWe 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.
More Barry Lopez Quotes
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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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One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.
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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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You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
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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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The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
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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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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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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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The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
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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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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?
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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