Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff. — 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
“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 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
I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Hasidism has a tradition that one of man's purposes is to assist God in the work of redemption by "hallowing" the things… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
As a thinker I keep discovering that beauty itself is as much a fact, and a mystery...I consider nature's facts -- its… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They’re out there… — 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
