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I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

Annie Dillard

There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.
ANNIE DILLARD

Event Gossip Hard Heart Learning Love Time
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD

Emergency Extend Kind Live Survival
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

Darkness Demand Finding Inspirational Necessary Outside Requirement Stars
The world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARD

Judgment World
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
ANNIE DILLARD

Comprehensive Earn Universe
Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
ANNIE DILLARD

Care Human Nature Nature Passionate
Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.
ANNIE DILLARD

Ansore Beauty Giant Home Mountain Spirit Throw Trekking
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.
ANNIE DILLARD

Book Happiness Literature Nature Night Reading Words
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
ANNIE DILLARD

Bell Experience Inspirational Life Lift Moments Struck
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.
ANNIE DILLARD

Inspirational Live Spend Time
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
ANNIE DILLARD

Color Hide Holy Spread Surface
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
ANNIE DILLARD

Catch Cup Empty Experience Grace Hollow Present Waterfall
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time – give it, give it all, give it now.
ANNIE DILLARD

Giving Lose Play Shoot Writing
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Grasp Necessary Obedient Passion Thinking
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Control Fancy Sleep Switch
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
ANNIE DILLARD

Die Friendship Hope Writing

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

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I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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