The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
BARRY LOPEZThe 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.
More Barry Lopez Quotes
-
-
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 -
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.
BARRY LOPEZ -
I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.
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 -
We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.
BARRY LOPEZ -
Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.
BARRY LOPEZ -
It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.
BARRY LOPEZ -
There’s so much to be afraid of.
BARRY LOPEZ -
The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
BARRY LOPEZ -
The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis.
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 -
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 -
In behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.
BARRY LOPEZ -
Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
BARRY LOPEZ -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you
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 -
You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
BARRY LOPEZ