The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Novels written with film contracts in mind have a faint but unmistakable, and ruinous, odor. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What geomancy reads what the windblown sand writes on the desert rock? I read there that all things live by a generous… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Our interpreting the universe as an artifact absolutely requires that we posit an author for it, or a celestial fimmaker, dramatist, painter,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Our reading was subversive, and we knew it... I was now believing books more than I believed what I saw and heard...… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter;… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“A great physicist taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He published many important books and papers. Often he had an idea… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools oyu have to signal the reader where the beats… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter;… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“As a child I read hoping to learn everything, so I could be like my father. I hoped to combine my father's… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
“...The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
“What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
“If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one… — Annie Dillard Copy Share
For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning? — Annie Dillard Copy Share
