You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
ANNIE DILLARDYou 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.
More Annie Dillard Quotes
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You can’t test courage cautiously.
ANNIE DILLARD -
We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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 -
These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
ANNIE DILLARD -
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
ANNIE DILLARD -
He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb.
ANNIE DILLARD -
You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Nature is, above all, profligate.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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.
ANNIE DILLARD -
At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Write about winter in the summer.
ANNIE DILLARD






