Annie Dillard Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Gestures, Stuff

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.11, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  9 Copy quote

• We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.

  Annie Dillard

  Prayer, Light, Joy

  8 Copy quote

• A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!

  Annie Dillard

  Work, Doors, Discipline

  49 Copy quote

• It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.

  Annie Dillard

  Birthday, Self, Ironic

  1974 Of self-consciousness. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, ch.6.

  10 Copy quote

• No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.

  Annie Dillard

  Children, Brain, Trying

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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools oyu have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go. (If you get it wrong, any least thing, the editor will throw your manuscript out.) Punctuation is not like musical notation; it doesn't indicate the length of pauses, but instead signifies logical relations. There are all sorts of people out there who know these things very well. You have to be among them even to begin.

  Annie Dillard

  Editors, People, Musical

  7 Copy quote

• The world knew you before you knew the world.

  Annie Dillard

  World

  Annie Dillard (1977). “Holy the firm”, HarperCollins Publishers

  7 Copy quote

• Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb.

  Annie Dillard

  Writing, Verbs, Used

  11 Copy quote

• When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. . . . I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.

  Annie Dillard

  Growing Up, Thinking, Hands

  6 Copy quote

• We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

  Annie Dillard

  Fancy

  Annie Dillard (2016). “Holy the Firm”, p.30, Canongate Books

  13 Copy quote

• We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home. 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

  Home, Heart, Sleep

  16 Copy quote

• These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

  Annie Dillard

  Seasons

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.83, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  12 Copy quote

• I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

  Annie Dillard

  Air, Layers, Awareness

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.68, Canongate Books

  7 Copy quote

• The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe.

  Annie Dillard

  Home, Men, Cells

  12 Copy quote

• Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can't think about them. I live with trees.

  Annie Dillard

  Thinking, Tree, Sun

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.88, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  4 Copy quote

• What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

  Annie Dillard

  Lying, Color, Holiness

  14 Copy quote

• The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

  Annie Dillard

  Made, Jest, Earnest

  ANNIE DILLARD (1974). “PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK”

  8 Copy quote

• Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

  Annie Dillard

  Nature, Believe, Autumn

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.66, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  17 Copy quote

• Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

  Annie Dillard

  Tunnels, Views, Darkness

  "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". Book by Annie Dillard, books.google.ru. January 1, 2011.

  15 Copy quote

• The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

  Annie Dillard

  Beach, Ocean, Sea

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

  17 Copy quote

• I still try to keep my eyes open. I'm always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I've not seen one

  Annie Dillard

  Eye, Trying, Soil

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.19, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  14 Copy quote

• Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Time

  58 Copy quote

• Push it. examine all things intensely and relentlessly.

  Annie Dillard

  All Things

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.87, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

• I think that the dying pray at the last not please but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks.

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Fall, Airplane

  ANNIE DILLARD (1974). “PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK”

  20 Copy quote

Page 3 of 13

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin