You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARDYou search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARDArt is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
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 wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
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 DILLARDOur life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
ANNIE DILLARDThe world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARDNo one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
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 DILLARDBooks swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
ANNIE DILLARDEvery live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARDI do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
ANNIE DILLARDAt 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 DILLARDNature is, above all, profligate.
ANNIE DILLARDThe extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
ANNIE DILLARDWe are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD