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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

The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Alone Love Secret Writing
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
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
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
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
ANNIE DILLARD

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

Color Hide Holy Spread Surface
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
ANNIE DILLARD

Comprehensive Earn Universe
Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
ANNIE DILLARD

Block Flake Mute Nature Silence World
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Control Fancy Sleep Switch
Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb.
ANNIE DILLARD

Use Writing Wrong
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

Empty Listen Mountain Ready Wait Wood Yourself
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.
ANNIE DILLARD

Alone Inquire Love People Pretty Subject
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

Care Learning Reading Writing
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
Nature is, above all, profligate.
ANNIE DILLARD

Nature One Liner

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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