Annie Dillard Quotes

Quotes about:

• We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Beach, Our Generation

  58 Copy quote

• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Wisdom, Travel

  "The Writing Life". Tikkun magazine, Volume 3, Number 6, 1988.

  91 Copy quote

• 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

  Sea, Waiting, Listening

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.67, Canongate Books

  75 Copy quote

• It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.

  Annie Dillard

  Sleep, Issues, Church

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.173, Canongate Books

  69 Copy quote

• No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

  Annie Dillard

  Land, Peaceful, Way

  79 Copy quote

• Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Time

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.274, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  16 Copy quote

• The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.

  Annie Dillard

  Greed, Spirit, Sensations

  17 Copy quote

• Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.

  Annie Dillard

  Rip, Connections

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.97, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  12 Copy quote

• 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. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. . . . Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Writing, Play

  "The Writing Life". Book by Annie Dillard, archive.nytimes.com. 1989.

  56 Copy quote

• Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Rest In Peace, Mystery

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.145, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  14 Copy quote

• I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.

  Annie Dillard

  Light, Trying, Path

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.121, Canongate Books

  11 Copy quote

• 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. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.

  Annie Dillard

  Motivational, Hands, Order

  "The Writing Life". Book by Annie Dillard, 1989.

  21 Copy quote

• You can't test courage cautiously.

  Annie Dillard

  Courage, Insperational, Bravery

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.102, Canongate Books

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Grace, Trying

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.105, Canongate Books

  51 Copy quote

• An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me?

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Religion, Atheism

  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ch. 7 (1974)

  83 Copy quote

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

  Annie Dillard

  Journey, Hiking, Might

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters”, p.56, Canongate Books

  16 Copy quote

• I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.

  Annie Dillard

  Recovery, New Beginnings, Addiction

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.4, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  15 Copy quote

• If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair... or go into business. You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

  Annie Dillard

  Wings, Way, Cliffs

  35 Copy quote

• We are here to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Play, House

  22 Copy quote

• We live in all we seek.

  Annie Dillard

  24 Copy quote

• I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them.

  Annie Dillard

  Beautiful, Air, Shining

  "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". Book by Annie Dillard, 1974.

  33 Copy quote

• There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

  Annie Dillard

  Journey, Self, Years

  47 Copy quote

• Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears.

  Annie Dillard

  Thinking, Soul, Holiness

  27 Copy quote

• Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Voice, Interesting

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.82, Canongate Books

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Caring, Human Nature, Humans

  14 Copy quote

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