Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past. — 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
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color. — 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
It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at… — 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
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
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Do women in love feel as men do? Do men love as women love? His virgin bride shared her pipe-frame bed all… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The… — 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 that one,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Goethe’s Faust risks all if he should cry to the moment, the 'augenblick', “Verweile doch!” “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer?… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“a few of the principles by which I live: A good gag is worth any amount of time, money and effort; never… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“And we the people are so vulnerable. Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear and our arms are time.… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I'm in the market for some present tense; I'm on the lookout, shopping around, more so every year. It's a seller's market—do… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Evidently, a given object took no particular amount of time to draw; instead the artist took the time, or didn’t take it,… — 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
“What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“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
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too,… — 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
I would like to live. . . open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a… — 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
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
“And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everyting, remembering nothing,… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive… — Annie Dillard Copy Share Image
Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would… — 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
