World Quotes by Annie Dillard

I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains

— Annie Dillard

“Each thing in the world is translucent.”

— Annie Dillard

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

— Annie Dillard

The writer studies literature, not the world.

— Annie Dillard

The world knew you before you knew the world.

— Annie Dillard

Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or…

— Annie Dillard

What is a house but a bigger skin, and a neighborhood map but the world's skin ever expanding?

— Annie Dillard

“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”

— Annie Dillard

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

— Annie Dillard

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

— Annie Dillard

The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all…

— Annie Dillard

Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

— Annie Dillard

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and…

— Annie Dillard

Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to…

— Annie Dillard

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now…

— Annie Dillard

Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that…

— Annie Dillard

There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the…

— Annie Dillard

The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should…

— Annie Dillard

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point…

— Annie Dillard

How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone.…

— Annie Dillard

I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis…

— Annie Dillard

Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we…

— Annie Dillard

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who…

— Annie Dillard

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the…

— Annie Dillard

What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter;…

— Annie Dillard

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been…

— Annie Dillard

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not…

— Annie Dillard

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or…

— Annie Dillard

All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a…

— Annie Dillard

Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if…

— Annie Dillard

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

— Annie Dillard

You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work.

— Annie Dillard

I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered…

— Annie Dillard

I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.

— Annie Dillard

How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit…

— Annie Dillard

“I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out.”

— Annie Dillard

“If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs," then clearly I had better…

— Annie Dillard

I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in…

— Annie Dillard

'Fecundity' is an ugly word for an ugly subject. It is ugly, at least, in the eggy animal world. I don't think…

— Annie Dillard

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

— Annie Dillard