Artist Quotes by Annie Dillard

14 Artist quotes by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard’s perspective on the artist feels like a breath taken at the edge of a forest. In 14 thoughtful notes, she highlights the quiet intensity of noticing the world and turning it into prose.

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The creative process obtains in all creative acts. So if I'm painting suddenly I'll see something that I didn't see before.

Annie Dillard

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How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit…

Annie Dillard

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Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.

Annie Dillard

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There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

Annie Dillard

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The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits…

Annie Dillard

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“What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut,…

Annie Dillard

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“Nothing rose to plug the gap, to address what some called “ultimate concerns,” unless you count the arts, the arts that lacked…

Annie Dillard

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How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone.…

Annie Dillard

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There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the…

Annie Dillard

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Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other…

Annie Dillard

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“You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of the paintbox. Adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said,…

Annie Dillard

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I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of…

Annie Dillard

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“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

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“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

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More by Annie Dillard

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus.

Annie Dillard

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“This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.”

Annie Dillard

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The creatures I seek do not want to be seen.

Annie Dillard

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Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.

Annie Dillard

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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

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“...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

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“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

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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

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It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory…

Annie Dillard

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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

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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