A biography for Lydia Millethasn’t been written yet.
“Work-wise, I try not to repeat myself too often. And I have to love whatever I'm doing.”
“Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it's our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.”
“The question of one versus two species of African elephants isn't about settling an arcane DNA argument; it's about life or death for these majestic, extraordinary creatures.”
“I don't like names that are clever or made-up sounding.”
“One man’s weakness is another man’s mercy.”
“In the 1970s, Safari Club International asked the federal government to approve its import of 1,125 not-yet-killed trophies of 40 endangered species, including gorillas, orangutans and tigers, according to the Humane Society of the United States.”
“My motto is, if you love something, don't set it free. No matter how hard it struggles. That would be stupid.”
“There has to be space for play in literature. We all need some breathing room.”
“Beneath the violet pillar, in the vacuum before the roar of the cloud, there came a soft sound that might have been heard by those who listened closely: the gentle sigh of an idea unbound.”
“We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.”
“The grizzly bears that live in and around Yellowstone make up almost half the population in the lower 48 states, and now those bears are at risk.”
“Marriage is like the romantic ideal, and yet the trappings around it and the culture about it are really the opposite of that.”
“Without even knowing why, we believe that to learn how to be human - which we have many years to do, for human beings have longer childhoods than any other species, a feature that to biologists and philosophers alike is one of our race's distinguishing characteristics - children must be surrounded by animal imagery.”
“Historically, grizzlies ranged from Alaska to Mexico, with at least 50,000 bears living in the western half of the contiguous United States. With European colonization, the bears were shot, poisoned, and trapped to the brink of extinction.”
“Snark describes a cynical position, and I'm not interested in that.”
“When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness.”
“I think that young readers have very strong stomachs.”
“For almost two centuries, American gray wolves, vilified in fact as well as fiction, were the victims of vicious government extermination programs. By the time the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, only a few hundred of these once-great predators were left in the lower 48 states.”
“I had hoped that going to Hiroshima would reveal something small, gritty, and precise to countervail the epic quality of historical accounts.”
“There was the honour and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within - and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums.”