Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
ANNIE DILLARDShe read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
More Annie Dillard Quotes
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The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
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 -
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
ANNIE DILLARD -
We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
ANNIE DILLARD -
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
ANNIE DILLARD -
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
ANNIE DILLARD -
These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
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 -
Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
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 -
You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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 -
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 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 -
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD -
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
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.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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.
ANNIE DILLARD -
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
ANNIE DILLARD -
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful
ANNIE DILLARD