Don't save something good for a later place. Don't hold back from your students, from the poor, don't try to keep anything for yourself 'cause it'll turn to ashes. Annie Dillard More Quotes by Annie Dillard More Quotes From Annie Dillard Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed. Annie Dillard encounters use writing Dan Gerber is one of our finest living poets. Annie Dillard finest poet If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself. Annie Dillard progress novelists understanding About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star. Annie Dillard curls stars years 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 house writing book You do what you do out of your private love of the thing itself. Annie Dillard The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents. Annie Dillard self doe world The surest sign of age is loneliness. Annie Dillard loneliness age time Who and of what import were the men whose bones bulk the Great Wall, the thirty million Mao starved, or the thirty million children not yet five who die each year now? Why, they are the insignificant others, of course; living or dead, they are just some of the plentiful others...And you? To what end were we billions of oddballs born? Annie Dillard wall men children Your feelings are none of your business. Annie Dillard none-of-your-business feelings Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. Annie Dillard grace No one can help you if you're stuck in a work. Only you can figure a way out, because only you can see the work's possibilities. Annie Dillard possibility helping way The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain and Lazarus. Annie Dillard hay tomatoes cain The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else. Annie Dillard smell writing blood The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. Annie Dillard body literature people I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind. Annie Dillard acres mind men I work mornings only. I go out to lunch. Afternoons I play with the baby, walk with my husband, or shovel mail. Annie Dillard husband morning baby 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 book children Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized. Annie Dillard secret joy ideas Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone. Annie Dillard buddhism mistake thinking
