Annie Dillard Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

  Annie Dillard

  4 Copy quote

• I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

  Annie Dillard

  Light, Tree, Vision

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.36, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.

  Annie Dillard

  Mother, Morning, Cat

  Annie Dillard (2009). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.3, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• The way you live your days is the way you live your life.

  Annie Dillard

  Live Your Life, Way

  4 Copy quote

• The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness... The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious mind will hush if you give it an egg.

  Annie Dillard

  Stupid, Simple, Eggs

  8 Copy quote

• There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.

  Annie Dillard

  Nature, Tree, Enlightenment

  5 Copy quote

• There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and, perhaps, a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things, of their complexity, fascination, and unexpectedness.

  Annie Dillard

  Work, Skills, Vocabulary

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.150, Canongate Books

  10 Copy quote

• I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feelings save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Country, Memories

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.80, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  4 Copy quote

• Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.

  Annie Dillard

  Dog, Pain, Book

  10 Copy quote

• What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

  Annie Dillard

  Differences, Blue, Whales

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.66, Canongate Books

  7 Copy quote

• Write about winter in the summer.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, Writing, Winter

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.82, Canongate Books

  6 Copy quote

• Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.

  Annie Dillard

  Fall, Air, Rivers

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.69, Canongate Books

  11 Copy quote

• You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.

  Annie Dillard

  Silence, Waiting, Listening

  6 Copy quote

• if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.

  Annie Dillard

  Earth, Ready, Stills

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.145, Canongate Books

  6 Copy quote

• There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

  Annie Dillard

  Spiritual, Clouds, Air

  10 Copy quote

• Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

  Annie Dillard

  Hands, Ideas, Facts

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.31, Canongate Books

  7 Copy quote

• We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Children, Culture

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.17, Canongate Books

  7 Copy quote

• Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Thinking, Clean

  Annie Dillard (1994). “The Annie Dillard reader”, Harpercollins

  7 Copy quote

• Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Written

  7 Copy quote

• I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.

  Annie Dillard

  Flirting, Men, Doe

  "Author Interview: Annie Dillard, Author of 'The Abundance'". Interview with Melissa Block, www.npr.org. March 12, 2016.

  8 Copy quote

• Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

  Annie Dillard

  Rip, Expression, Trying

  Annie Dillard (2009). “The Writing Life”, p.11, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

• Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.

  Annie Dillard

  Strong, Rip, Fire

  Annie Dillard (1994). “The Annie Dillard reader”, Harpercollins

  7 Copy quote

• What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

  Annie Dillard

  Mean, Doe, Calling

  7 Copy quote

• People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, People, Lazy

  4 Copy quote

• The surest sign of age is loneliness.

  Annie Dillard

  Time, Loneliness, Age

  7 Copy quote

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