“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Am I living?'...I forgot myself, and sank into dim and watery oblivion.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a… — 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
“The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, and it smells good. Writing is… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth,… — 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
“I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“It should surprise no one that the life of the writer--such as it is--is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“She bade solitude good-bye. Good-bye to no schedule but whim; good-bye to her life among no things but her own and each… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“When, over the following months, Minta Randall found that Eustace apparently reciprocated her profoundest and most secret feelings, she thought she had… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Children...wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“You cannot mend the chromosome, quell the earthquake, or stanch the flood. You cannot atone for the dead tyrants’ murders and you… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“life by its mere appalling length is a feat of endurance for which you haven't the strength.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“The interior life expands and fills; it approaches the edge of skin; it thickens with its own vivid story; it even begins… — 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
