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44411dd She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. words literature reading Annie Dillard
9a3fefe How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. living Annie Dillard
82c3c6d Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after. Annie Dillard
804f2d8 Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you. life inspirational Annie Dillard
36e5a56 I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. Annie Dillard
7d465cb There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life. Annie Dillard
8d404aa 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
0b30374 Thomas Merton wrote, "there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, an.. seeing nature spirituality landscape Annie Dillard
a77feac What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly ba.. Annie Dillard
bad1e35 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. inspirational meditative Annie Dillard
a8e8095 He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know. Annie Dillard
ab3529c Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and.. Annie Dillard
f4ef235 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 .. Annie Dillard
6b622f4 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
f59b152 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 lifeb.. living life schedule Annie Dillard
0a96eec You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy. Annie Dillard
4da0941 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
e3ae353 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
89be3f5 She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die. reading Annie Dillard
1d7c9ac The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing." Annie Dillard
a59288d Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying. Annie Dillard
16c9e13 We live in all we seek. Annie Dillard
5efd277 Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? writing Annie Dillard
3de0c20 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. words literature reading nature Annie Dillard
5894a56 We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. Annie Dillard
50b2cdd The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful? Annie Dillard
ca90847 How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing. living Annie Dillard
4011771 I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs. purpose Annie Dillard
7766b6b After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.. Annie Dillard
10e2b41 I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. Annie Dillard
572a5b7 One of the 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. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Si.. Annie Dillard
0d098ce When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost .. seeing nature spirituality landscape mysticism Annie Dillard
9745644 The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. spirituality life-lessons wisdom Annie Dillard
313bbe1 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
0c506fb Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us. ideals Annie Dillard
b87519b There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once u.. Annie Dillard
f8cafe0 It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. Annie Dillard
6a3a840 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 .. nature inspiration exhilaration grace water mysticism Annie Dillard
42e60b2 These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present. Annie Dillard
76a0f30 I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feelings save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consci.. Annie Dillard
415a075 We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. Annie Dillard
96978b2 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. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a ten.. nature listening Annie Dillard
16ef94b There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. Annie Dillard
4fa510a Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. Annie Dillard
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