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
Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merely, and a wandering without end. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not. — 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 with that… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go,… — 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
Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets? — 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
Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and… — 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
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves. — 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 Image
“...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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image