The Glorians Quotes

“What is the single best thing a person can do for a sustainable future? In a shocking gesture before the audience, the scientist raises her glass and makes a toast to unsuicide. “That is the gesture behind the entire novel,” Richard Powers explains: “the active, even violent effort to oppose a way of life that would gladly bring itself and all else down with it, rather than capitulate to even the mildest forms of reconciliation to the rest of the living world.” To commit unsuicide as a gesture of sanity against the madness that is killing all of us held a profound resonance for me.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“One species, our species, has set the world asunder. If this sounds like biblical terms, it is because these are biblical times.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“A person cannot be afraid of being foolish. For everything, every gesture is sacred.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“Rocks and humans are not so different; we are also acted upon by time. My face is its own geologic map with creases, wrinkles, and eyelids pulled down by gravity, weathered by wind, marked by the sun, and rounded by time. I celebrate the scars that remind me of contact: a fall in Bum Steer Canyon, the blade of an ice pick, a whip of a branch, chicken pox. Why do we smooth away our storylines etched on our faces to pretend we have not lived?”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“Love is a Glorian—resistance and insistence—our refusal to be numb to a world on fire.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“The Glorians are reaching out to us, inviting us to engage. They arrive unplanned, unearned, irrefutable. They are Grace.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“By reimagining home, we create a place and a peace for all we stand to gain: a livable future in a landscape of burning hearts that implores us to stay soft when things become hard. And stay strong when things fall apart.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“Empathy prevails most powerfuly when our shared gaze with humanity is extended to all species.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“The Glorians are not only among us, they are the next generations waiting for us to open the gate, step to the side—and let them rush in like water in the desert.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“The deep ecologist Arne Næss said, City lights are a conspiracy against higher thoughts.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“I am learning that a Glorian cannot be defined, only met with surprise and awe and, sometimes, terror. Humor may accompany them. They can be Tricksters in any shape, size, or confluence.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“A Glorian is an encounter. A Glorian is a meeting with élan vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“Rocks and humans are not so different; we are also acted upon by time. My face is its own geologic map with creases, wrinkles and eyelids pulled down by gravity, weathered by wind, marked by the sun, and rounded by time.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“Sometimes”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“So for me to commit “unsuicide” is not only logical but necessary: We can resist despair and complacency and act lovingly”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

“We can reweave the world anew not from the places of fear and bout, but from intimate spaces of belonging. We are meant to engage, not withdraw.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary