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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

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
You can’t test courage cautiously.
ANNIE DILLARD

Caution Courage One Liner Test
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

Event Gossip Hard Heart Learning Love Time
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 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
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

Answer Beauty Grace Performance Sense Thinking Try
Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
ANNIE DILLARD

Art Traffic Traning
The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Alone Love Secret Writing
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
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
ANNIE DILLARD

Creation Gesture Stuff
The world knew you before you knew the world.
ANNIE DILLARD

Judgment World
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
ANNIE DILLARD

Build Inspirational Jump Time Wings
I 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 DILLARD

Grasp Necessary Obedient Passion Thinking
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
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
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

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Annie Dillard Quotes