Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
No one can help you if you're stuck in a work. Only you can figure a way out, because only you can… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair... or go into business. You’ve got to jump off cliffs… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you… — 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
If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we… — 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
Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that… — 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
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
Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us… — 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
