“Am I living?'...I forgot myself, and sank into dim and watery oblivion.” — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without… — 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
The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard… — 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
“You cannot mend the chromosome, quell the earthquake, or stanch the flood. You cannot atone for the dead tyrants’ murders and you… — 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
“Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They… — 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 deprivation. Many… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“The interior life is often stupid. Its egoism blinds it and deafens it; its imagination spins out ignorant tales, fascinated. It fancies… — 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
“Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
It's about waking up. A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she's living. She dreams along, loving the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“When, over the following months, Minta Randall found that Eustace apparently reciprocated her profoundest and most secret feelings, she thought she had… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“People love the good not much less than the beautiful, and the happy as well, or even just the living, for the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I think that the dying pray at the last not please but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the… — 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
