Books Quotes by Annie Dillard

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

— Annie Dillard

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

— Annie Dillard

“She reads books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”

— Annie Dillard

I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.

— Annie Dillard

Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.

— Annie Dillard

All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.

— Annie Dillard

If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself.

— Annie Dillard

People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

— Annie Dillard

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

— Annie Dillard

“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”

— Annie Dillard

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to…

— Annie Dillard

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

— Annie Dillard

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

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature…

— Annie Dillard

The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.

— Annie Dillard

Almost all of my many passionate interests, and my many changes of mind, came through books. Books prompted the many vows I…

— Annie Dillard

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did,…

— Annie Dillard

Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby…

— Annie Dillard

“What geomancy reads what the windblown sand writes on the desert rock? I read there that all things live by a generous…

— Annie Dillard

“Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There…

— Annie Dillard

“Our interpreting the universe as an artifact absolutely requires that we posit an author for it, or a celestial fimmaker, dramatist, painter,…

— Annie Dillard

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

“Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God,…

— Annie Dillard

Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would…

— Annie Dillard

“A great physicist taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He published many important books and papers. Often he had an idea…

— Annie Dillard

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish…

— Annie Dillard

What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter;…

— Annie Dillard

The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is…

— Annie Dillard

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away,…

— Annie Dillard

Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a…

— Annie Dillard

“One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every…

— Annie Dillard

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

— Annie Dillard

“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

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right…

— Annie Dillard

“Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and…

— Annie Dillard

“I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision…

— Annie Dillard

The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.

— Annie Dillard

The novel is a game or joke shared between author and reader.

— Annie Dillard

The writer studies literature, not the world.

— Annie Dillard

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and…

— Annie Dillard