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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

Annie Dillard

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
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
We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
ANNIE DILLARD

Feeling Place Planet Travel
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
ANNIE DILLARD

Emergency Extend Kind Live Survival
I 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 DILLARD

Beam Cause Inspirational Light Myself Path Practice See Try Wave
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
ANNIE DILLARD

Control Fancy Sleep Switch
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
ANNIE DILLARD

Creation Gesture Stuff
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 Time Writing
Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
ANNIE DILLARD

Care Human Nature Nature Passionate
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
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
ANNIE DILLARD

Darkness Demand Finding Inspirational Necessary Outside Requirement Stars
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Afternoon Spend Travel Vacation
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
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
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
You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
ANNIE DILLARD

Break Broken Heart Heart Search
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
You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.
ANNIE DILLARD

Heart Prayer Serve Sing Work Hard World
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
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
ANNIE DILLARD

Connection Dance Enjoyment Life
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
ANNIE DILLARD

Inspirational Learning Live Remember
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
ANNIE DILLARD

Love Man She Woman
No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
ANNIE DILLARD

Escape Land Promise Wild
Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
ANNIE DILLARD

Block Flake Mute Nature Silence World
The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful
ANNIE DILLARD

Beautiful Nature Proper Question Real
Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
ANNIE DILLARD

Art Traffic Traning
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

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

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Popular Authors

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