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The world knew you before you knew the world.

Annie Dillard

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.
ANNIE DILLARD

Book Happiness Literature Nature Night Reading Words
I 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 DILLARD

Die Friendship Hope Writing
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
ANNIE DILLARD

Pronounce Quite Sea Whisper
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Afternoon Spend Travel Vacation
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

Alone Inquire Love People Pretty Subject
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD

Emergency Extend Kind Live Survival
Write about winter in the summer.
ANNIE DILLARD

Summer Winter Writing
Mountains 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 DILLARD

Ansore Beauty Giant Home Mountain Spirit Throw Trekking
You can’t test courage cautiously.
ANNIE DILLARD

Caution Courage One Liner Test
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
ANNIE DILLARD

Bell Experience Inspirational Life Lift Moments Struck
We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
ANNIE DILLARD

Encounter Feet Flick God Mercy
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
ANNIE DILLARD

Comprehensive Earn Universe
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
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
ANNIE DILLARD

According Away Believe Book Light Swept
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
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARD

Love Man She Woman

The world knew you before you knew the world.

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The world knew you before you knew the world.

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