Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it... The vision is not… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Time is the continuous loop, the snakeskin with scales endlessly overlapping without beginning or end, or time is an ascending spiral if… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Do women in love feel as men do? Do men love as women love? His virgin bride shared her pipe-frame bed all… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Goethe’s Faust risks all if he should cry to the moment, the 'augenblick', “Verweile doch!” “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer?… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“a few of the principles by which I live: A good gag is worth any amount of time, money and effort; never… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Hasidism has a tradition that one of man's purposes is to assist God in the work of redemption by "hallowing" the things… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I'm in the market for some present tense; I'm on the lookout, shopping around, more so every year. It's a seller's market—do… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees. But under… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Evidently, a given object took no particular amount of time to draw; instead the artist took the time, or didn’t take it,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What I call innocence is the spirit’s unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed… — 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
“There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite… — 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
“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in… — 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
No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too,… — 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
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
