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 DILLARDWherever 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 DILLARDThe 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 DILLARDI 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 DILLARDThe dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
ANNIE DILLARDShe read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
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.
ANNIE DILLARDHe 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 DILLARDI 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 DILLARDYou can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.
ANNIE DILLARDWe are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARDThere is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
ANNIE DILLARDMake connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARDThe life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
ANNIE DILLARDNothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARDThe universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
ANNIE DILLARDThe sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
ANNIE DILLARD