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You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

Annie Dillard

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
ANNIE DILLARD

Dedicate Giving Heart Life Live Worth
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
It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
ANNIE DILLARD

Breathe Glance Power See Time
You can’t test courage cautiously.
ANNIE DILLARD

Caution Courage One Liner Test
You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Break Broken Heart Heart Search
We live in all we seek.
ANNIE DILLARD

Live One Liner Seek
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
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
You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.
ANNIE DILLARD

Heart Prayer Serve Sing Work Hard World
Nature is, above all, profligate.
ANNIE DILLARD

Nature One Liner
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.
ANNIE DILLARD

Awareness Break Up Dive Rise Sea Skin Time
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
ANNIE DILLARD

Hard Time Life Live Shortage
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
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
ANNIE DILLARD

Air Book Breathe Live Reading
No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
ANNIE DILLARD

Escape Land Promise Wild
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
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
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
We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
ANNIE DILLARD

Encounter Feet Flick God Mercy
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

Beam Cause Inspirational Light Myself Path Practice See Try Wave
Write about winter in the summer.
ANNIE DILLARD

Summer Winter Writing
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARD

Connection Dance Enjoyment Life
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
ANNIE DILLARD

Faint Life Mystery Surface
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Control Fancy Sleep Switch
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
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.
ANNIE DILLARD

Cool Eyes Flame Look See Spark Tinder Water
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

You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

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You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

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