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 DILLARDWe have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
More Annie Dillard Quotes
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I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.
ANNIE DILLARD -
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
ANNIE DILLARD -
No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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 -
Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
ANNIE DILLARD -
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 -
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARD -
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
ANNIE DILLARD -
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD