Quotes by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard

American author

Lived from: 1945 -

Category: Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 30 april 1945

  • People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subject inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
  • Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.
  • Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.
  • There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.
  • The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.
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Quotes 1 till 20 of 24.

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  • 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.
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  • Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?".
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination. If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • 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
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  • No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subject inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • 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
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  • The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.
    ― Annie Dillard
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  • There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.
    ― Annie Dillard
    - +
     0
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What are the most famous quotes from Annie Dillard?

The two most famous quotes from Annie Dillard are:

  • "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."
  • "Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block."

When did Annie Dillard live?

Annie Dillard was born in 1945.