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Barry Lopez Biography

Barry Holstun Lopez (born January 6, 1945) is an American author, essayist, and fiction writer whose work is known for its humanitarian and environmental concerns. He won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Arctic Dreams (1986) and his Of Wolves and Men (1978) was a National Book Award finalist.

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Barry Lopez Quotes

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.

Consideration, Human Life, Land, Poetry, Power

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.

Know, Looks, Stories, Works, Writer, Writing

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

Alive, Food, Inspire, Needs, Stories

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

Compassion, Heart, Holding, Love, Stories

The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.

Hate, Indifference, Indifferent, Love Is, Opposites

Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. 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. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves.

Food, Giving, Memories, People, Stories, Story

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?

Adventure, Astonishment, Entrepreneur, Mean, Ponds, Retain

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.

Journalists, Living, Long, People, Trying, Writers

For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.

Exchange, Inspirational, Language, Motivational, Struggle, Together

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.

Afraid, Book, Confused, Given, Thinking

I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.

Against, Earth, Heart, Inspirational, Soul

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.

Diverse Society, Information, Kernel, Mean, Society, Space

One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.

Civilization, Dream, Extremes, Man, Nature, Regret

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

Definitive, Excellence, Expression, Light, Live, Questions

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.

Courage, Place, Simply, Understand, Universe

The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.

Gaze, Reached, Soul, Wolf

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

Expression, Inspirational Life, Leaning, Light, Making, Worthy

Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive.

Loneliness, Exercise, Night, Matter, Anxiety

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself.

Aware, Blood, Darkness, Fully, Growth, Horror

The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.

Intelligent, Love, Reason, Thing

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