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Annie Dillard

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Famous Annie Dillard Quotes

“Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.”

IfsWorldBelieveWholeSeemsNatureCommonCreationJudgingClaimsTradeCommon SenseRevelationsAnarchyFringeExtremismLunaticLikelihoodGiraffeImprobability
Author:Annie Dillard
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“We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home. There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.”

IfsHeartHardReasonHomeDarkSleepSilenceBreakEventsTalesNecksGossipShoreTossSlopesDazzling
Author:Annie Dillard
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“The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness... The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious mind will hush if you give it an egg.”

IfsWorldWantGivingMindTwoReasonBodyEasySimpleForeverAwarenessStupidReturnProudVery GoodDearSatisfiedSettlingReason WhyEggsWhy NotAmbitiousDishesLive ForeverLureHushSidekicksSpaniels
Author:Annie Dillard
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“Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire.”

IfsLightPastRememberBehindsGrowingAirSceneOne DayClaimsGratefulSizeHolesFrightenedBlankTrapsCavesNoticingScrapDarkening
Author:Annie Dillard
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.”

IfsWorldFactsHandsPovertyHealthyFindingsMereLifetimeSimplicityCastsExcitedGenerousPennies
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“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.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWellsLittlesReaderBeatsToolsRelationMusicalCraftsLengthLogicalEditorsPausesSignalsEmphasisManuscriptsPunctuation
Author: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. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.”

IfsWayWellsLooksChildrenLongDoneFactsAgeCertainLanguageSpeechMelodyEnglish LanguageSyllablesEarnestnessSpoken English
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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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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