Annie Dillard Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

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

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Air, Breathe

  Annie Dillard (1992). “The living”, Thorndike Pr

• 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.

• 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

  Book, Writing, Hands

• 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.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Book

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.88, Canongate Books

• 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. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.

  Annie Dillard

  Running, Believe, Book

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.69, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

• I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Struggle, Writing

• Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.

  Annie Dillard

  Dog, Pain, Book

• The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Writing, Sound

• 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

  Book, Light, Way

• 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

  Running, Book, Night

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.69, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

• When you open a book,” the sentimental library posters said, “anything can happen.” This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone’s way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Blow, Land

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.77, Canongate Books

• People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, People, Lazy

• Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Firsts, Excitement

  "Write Till You Drop". www.nytimes.com. May 28, 1989.

• The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Writing, Spinning

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.86, Canongate Books

• Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Written

• If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Fool, Publish

• All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Extravagant, Pure

• Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Writing, House

• It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Writing, Long

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.85, Canongate Books

• I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

  Annie Dillard

  Art, Book, Writing

• The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Wrestling, Writing

• What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. ... What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Imagination, People

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.174, Canongate Books

• Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Imagination, World

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.114, Canongate Books

• Almost all of my many passionate interests, and my many changes of mind, came through books. Books prompted the many vows I made to myself.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Mind, Passionate

• Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love.

  Annie Dillard

  Baby, Children, Book

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