“ Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them... ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mockup of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow? ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me? ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ 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- Copy
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“ We are here to witness. There is nothing else to do with those mute materials we do not need. Until Larry teaches his stone to talk, until God changes his mind, or until the pagan gods slip back to their hilltop groves, all we can do with the whole inhuman array is watch it. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But and this is the point who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a wellknown signal that meant, ‘Come down to the water.’ It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look, I see fire: that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ If you ask a twentyoneyearold poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ 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- Copy
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“ It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from everrenewable sources is endless, impartial, and free. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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“ The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning? ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
“ Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair. ”
- Annie Dillard- Copy
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