Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb.
ANNIE DILLARDThe dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
More Annie Dillard Quotes
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The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
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Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
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We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
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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.
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The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
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These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
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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 -
The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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.
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There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
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I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.
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You can’t test courage cautiously.
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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 -
I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
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The world knew you before you knew the world.
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Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
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Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.
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Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
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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.
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What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
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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.
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Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
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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.
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I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
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People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
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Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD