We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARDWe are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARDYou search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARDOne 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 DILLARDThe extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
ANNIE DILLARDOne 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 DILLARDArt is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
ANNIE DILLARDNothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARDI had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
ANNIE DILLARDThe sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
ANNIE DILLARDI 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 DILLARDOur life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
ANNIE DILLARDI think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
ANNIE DILLARDPeople 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 DILLARDMountains 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 DILLARDI wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
ANNIE DILLARDThese are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
ANNIE DILLARD