Quotessence
Home / Authors / Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldWritingIfsNatureMysterySpiritLightSeeingConsciousnessGrace

Famous Annie Dillard Quotes

“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.”

TryingFirstsBelieveNatureTreeReturnDon't BelieveRadicalSoilAutumnSchemesLimitlessCheaperExtravaganceManicFall AutumnDerangedDepressiveAutumn LeavesAutumn SeasonThriftyAutumn Equinox
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“It's about waking up. A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she's living. She dreams along, loving the exuberant life of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious to herself -- and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive. She notices her own awareness. And she notices that she is set down here, mysteriously, in a going world.”

WorldFeelsChildrenDreamAliveAwarenessWake UpSensesWakingLoving LifeObliviousBingo
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“Tonight I walked around the pond scaring frogs; a couple of them jumped off, going, in effect, eek, and most grunted, and the pond was still. But one big frog, bright green like a poster-paint frog, didn't jump, so I waved my arm and stamped to scare it, and it jumped suddenly, and I jumped, and then everything in the pond jumped, and I laughed and laughed.”

StillsBigsEffectsArmsCoupleGreenPaintTonightScareLaughedFrogsPostersPonds
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“You can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And one day, in the thick of this, approaching some partial vision, you will (I swear) find yourself on the receiving end of - of all things - an "idea for a story," and you will, God save you, start thinking about writing some fiction of your own. Then you will understand, in what I fancy might be a blinding flash, that all this passionate thinking is what fiction is about, that all those other fiction writers started as you did, and are laborers in the same vineyard.”

ThinkingWritingMindIdeasEndsStoriesMightEarthFictionVisionOne DayAll ThingsPassionateDespiteFancyFrustrationFinding YourselfThickReceivingFlashSwearFiction WritersLaborersVineyards
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail.”

IfsWorldWayWholeWaterBloodSixHundredRedGreenComplexesRingsThirtyRemoveIronAtomsTailsCarbonOxygenMoleculesDotsHydrogenStreamingGoldfishNitrogenMagnesiumComplex Relationships
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“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-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.”

YearsLooksPersonsStillsRealEndsSelfCountryFeelingsBeautifulFacesMemoriesSecretConsciousnessCuttingOne ThingEvolutionLoversMountainCreaturesYears AgoFellowsCreatorStrangerNostalgiaCoffeeTricksBitterThanksRecognitionBelongingDividesIronicSelf ConsciousnessAstonishmentSeparatingBeautiful FaceReal Feelings
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“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.”

HardEnoughSpiritReadingSweetGreedSensesSensationsGood LifePassagesWriting LifeGood DayShortage
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“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!”

IfsStatesDoneGrowsWorkRoomsStudyGrowingProgressDoorsHard WorkDisciplineOne DayHarderChairsOver ItLionsTime ManagementMasterySelf ControlSelf DisciplineCagesShoutingSkipWork In ProgressMustangWorkload
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.”

IfsBodyUsedMotherNightFightingHalfMorningBloodLandMiddleFrontsBedCatWindowRoseSticksNosesPrintCoveredChestsMilkTomsSkullsDaylightClawsMiddle Of The NightPawsSharpeningPaw Prints
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsWritingNextLiteratureImaginationMoralVisionWrittenBloodRocksBandWeakDancingMereHearingIntellectSmellSensesAppealsGood WritingWritten Word
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“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.”

IfsLooksWholeFacesLife IsViewsDarknessOur LivesMysteryBandPraiseSurfaceLandscapeIdleLeafsTunnelsChoirMinersRight QuestionsTracing
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them.”

WorldDoneCareBeautifulWonderAirTreeShareFitCreaturesEatingShiningAgingBreatheFallenSpiteCompanionSurvivorImperfectionDelicateBatsWrecksGetting AlongFallen World
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“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.”

WorldFirstsLooksHas BeensWholeShowsEyeUniverseWaterDealsFireCreationWhole WorldFlamesEmptinessSparksGesturesVigorExtravagantExtravaganceIntricacyTinder
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you can rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff”

TryingI CanLightSpiritForceCausesCan DoSpaceSecretPathSeeingWindWaveSpreadGiantsSailParticlesBeamPuffRigsDeep Space
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“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.”

WorldStillsTwoEyeRunningPainFeltAnd LoveSorryIsraelRanRefugeDoorwaysOnly LoveTwo WorldsI Am SorryAm Sorry
Book:Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Create image

“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.”

IfsTryingDoeCareRunningDiesTurnsUniverseChanceOur LivesSeeingBlindMonstersFixedBeastRobotsGrindHaltNowhere To Turn
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image