Appeals Quote by Annie Dillard

“The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.”

Annie Dillard

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More by Annie Dillard

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus.

Annie Dillard

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“This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.”

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The creatures I seek do not want to be seen.

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Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.

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We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the…

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“...The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing…

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“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me…

Annie Dillard

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

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

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It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life…

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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…

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“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 to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world. You thought you knew the place and all its routines, but you see you hadn’t known. Whole stacks at the library held books devoted to…

Annie Dillard

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Quotations can be valuable, like raisins in the rice pudding, for adding iron as well as eye appeal.

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If Robert Heinlein is more to your taste than George Lucas: “If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against.” That’s certainly true of me. Over my lifetime, the Republican Party has…

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All the cliches of glamorous sophistication have little appeal to me. Do I want to live the British version of 'Dynasty?' No thanks!

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It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God…

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I liked wrestling a lot better than boxing. I remember thinking at that time that wrestling was a pure demonstration of strength, which I…

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As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the…

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The ascent of any route begins, in dreams at least, the autumn before. Our minds ring, involuntarily, with the alluring names of mountains, aiguilles, faces and ridges, Is it the name itself which is so tempting, or the picture we have of the mountain itself, or does the appeal come from our feeling of the actual process of climbing? All…

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