Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez
Barry Holstun Lopezis 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 and his Of Wolves and Menwas a National Book Award finalist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth6 January 1945
CountryUnited States of America
loneliness exercise night
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.
inspirational-life light expression
You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
inspirational motivational struggle
For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.
land understanding urges
The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.
soul
The gaze of the wolf reached into our soul.
inspirational-life answers
There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.
long people trying
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.
confused book thinking
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.
typewriters trying stories
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.
educational roots dry
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.
writing advice together
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.
hate love-is opposites
The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.
adventure mean entrepreneur
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?
imagination giving shapes
It is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.