Quotessence
Home / Books / An American Childhood

An American Childhood

Book by Annie Dillard · 3 quotes · World, Awareness, Childhood

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldAwarenessChildhoodChildrenBookImaginationMemoirSkinsWantedArmsAwakeningConsciousnessEarthFeelingsIdeasIfsInteriorsJoyLibraryMemory

An American Childhood Quotes

“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down. She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself. I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.”

ImaginationChildhoodParentingCuriosityAutonomyBenign Neglect
Book:An American Childhood
Create image

“What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. ... What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.”

PeopleWorldBookMatterFeelingsWantedImaginationSubjectsEventsGeniusDepthExtremesSurfaceOriginalityInteriorsSubject MatterRaptureThoughts And FeelingsWildnessMatchedExaltation
Book:An American Childhood
Create image