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Annie Dillard

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Famous Annie Dillard Quotes

“When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. . . . I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.”

ThinkingWorldWayYearsFirstsHandsUsedUniverseMy OwnGrowing UpGrowingSeeingPerspectiveLuckySixSurpriseSevenCastsExcitedGenerousMeritSeven YearsPenniesPittsburghFree GiftsPasserby
Author:Annie Dillard
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“The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe.”

IfsMenHomeSpiritTurnsUniverseMysteryRocksWindMountainBlindCleanCellsSoilGapsSparesCliffsStalkingIcySplittingBlind ManLatitudeMapleUnbound
Author:Annie Dillard
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“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 will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?”

IfsKnowsFeelsMindMayReadingOur LivesMysteryPossibilityInspireHigherCreaturesPressesMajestyBewilderedMeaningfulness
Author:Annie Dillard
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“We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the people, events, and things of the day - to which we as sophisticated children have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.”

PeopleChildrenLongShowsFacesLyingStuffMysteryEventsColorSightObviousSpreadSurfaceHolinessSophisticatedCaptivesObliviousPlain Sight
Author:Annie Dillard
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“Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.”

WritingLeftRoomsCitiesNovelNew YorkSummerMarkWinterParisNew York CityScholarDesksWaltPrairieJoyceDublinNorwayConnecticutHuckleberryIbsen
Book:The Abundance
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“Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you're alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet.”

KnowsFeelsTryingLightTodayWalksStepsAliveJourneyFeetPlanetsHugeWalkingShadowTricksWanderLandscapeExcellentUnexpectedHikingTrekkingJanuaryStrollingArcsSauntering
Book:The Abundance
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