Barry Lopez Quotes - Page 2

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Fall, Ignorance, Land

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.

  Barry Lopez

  Quality, Century, Despise

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• Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall.

  Barry Lopez

  Summer, Spring, Fall

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.218, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Writing, Looks, Stories

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Inspirational Life, Responsibility, Adults

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.529, Open Road Media

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• Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.

  Barry Lopez

  Years, Giving, Sublime

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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?

  Barry Lopez

  Animal, Land, Forgiving

  Barry Lopez (2011). “Light Action in the Caribbean: Stories”, p.45, Vintage

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• The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you

  Barry Lopez

  Powerful, Imagination, Influence

  Barry Lopez (2016). “Of Wolves and Men”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

  Barry Lopez

  Inspire, Needs, Stories

  FaceBook post by Barry Lopez from Aug 10, 2010

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• Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty.

  Barry Lopez

  Eden, Patterns, Divine

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• It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.

  Barry Lopez

  Wise, Giving, Imagination

  Barry Lopez (2004). “Of Wolves and Men”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Animal, Blood, Eerie

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.61, Open Road Media

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• Because you have seen something doesn't mean you can explain it. Differing interpretations will always abound, even when good minds come to bear. The kernel of indisputable information is a dot in space; interpretations grow out of the desire to make this point a line, to give it direction. The directions in which it can be sent, the uses to which it can be put by a culturally, professionally, and geographically diverse society are almost without limit. The possibilities make good scientists chary.

  Barry Lopez

  Mean, Diverse Society, Space

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.190, Open Road Media

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• What does it mean to grow rich? Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a ‘fortune,’ which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north? Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one’s homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond’s Bay wealth was? Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe?

  Barry Lopez

  Adventure, Mean, Entrepreneur

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Inspirational, Motivational, Struggle

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Animal, Men, Doe

  Barry Lopez (2016). “Of Wolves and Men”, p.213, Open Road Media

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• If I were to offer any advice to young writers, it would be this: be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully, and then write thoughtfully, with respect both for the reader and your sources.

  Barry Lopez

  Writing, Advice, Together

  FaceBook post by Barry Lopez from Aug 04, 2011

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

  Barry Lopez

  Inspirational Life, Light, Expression

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.529, Open Road Media

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• The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.

  Barry Lopez

  Soul

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Typewriters, Trying, Stories

  Interview with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. April 30, 2010.

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• There's so much to be afraid of.

  Barry Lopez

  "Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. April 30, 2010.

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Apples, Temptation, Gaps

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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.

  Barry Lopez

  Thinking, People, Atmosphere

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• 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

  Education, Time, Learning

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Desert Notes and River Notes”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.

  Barry Lopez

  Inspirational Life, Answers

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.529, Open Road Media

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