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 More Quotes by Annie Dillard More Quotes From Annie Dillard The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is. Annie Dillard animalmeaninteresting You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy. Annie Dillard ranarmstests There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street. Annie Dillard enlightenmentnaturetree 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 good-lifereadingsweet Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit. Annie Dillard airriversfall Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. Annie Dillard workwritingmemories 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. Annie Dillard abetconsciousnesspeople I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface and exit through it. Annie Dillard rough-edgesexitcutting if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not. Annie Dillard readystillsearth You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence. Annie Dillard silencewaitinglistening The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write. Annie Dillard stuffwriting You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting. Annie Dillard drunkpaininteresting When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life. Annie Dillard dedicatedteachstudents 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 editorsmusicalpeople The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives. Annie Dillard nowhere-to-turnrunningtrying When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. Annie Dillard realwritingyears I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing. Annie Dillard new-beginningsrecoveryaddiction The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. Annie Dillard gesturesstufflife These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present. Annie Dillard seasons The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. Annie Dillard ecuadorspectacularrivers
