Quotessence
Home / Authors / Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldWritingIfsNatureMysterySpiritLightSeeingConsciousnessGraceReligionBeautyCreationPrayerWonderFireGodJoyScienceSoul

Famous Annie Dillard Quotes

“Hasidism has a tradition that one of man's purposes is to assist God in the work of redemption by "hallowing" the things of creation. By a tremendous heave of his spirit, the devout man frees the divine sparks trapped in the mute things of time; he uplifts the forms and moments of creation, bearing them aloft into that rare air and hallowing fire in which all clays must shatter and burst. Keeping the subsoil world under trees in mind, in intelligence, is the least I can do.”

MenWorldMindI CanMomentsFormSpiritPurposeCan DoFireAirTreeLandCreationDivineTraditionRedemptionUpliftingSparksTrappedClayMute
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.”

WorldWantWritingMindWellsMayArtBookAbleArtistPleasureAttentionStudyPiecesProductsReaderSucceedStructureAdmireDividing
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“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
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

“The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”

WorldTogetherBeautifulGivenWaterNatureFreedomFitTerribleFlowLipsCreatorWeatherGiantsSoilWildernessFlashBugsNourishmentSapClockworkDazzleCreeksBirdsongDragonfliesMinnowsPizzazz
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar,and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.”

WorldMomentsMightHateForceStepsFireBeatsI HateRoundsFixedSparksThreadFutilityJarsCaterpillarsMasonsCharmedRimsProcessionVasesTinder
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“It would seem that emotions are the curse, not death-emotions that appear to have developed upon a few freaks as a special curse from Malevolence. All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then, go back to the creek lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first.”

WorldFirstsStatesSeemsNaturalEmotionSpecialFineLibraryCurseFreakReedsCreeksMalevolenceLobotomyMuskrats
Book:The Annie Dillard reader
Create image

“The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.”

WorldFacesWaterPrayerSilenceStepsPrayingThousandTenWingsNotesQuittingDistinctionAddressesSilence IsBlindedRight DirectionTentsBlurBroodingAlphasSteps In The Right Direction
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“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
Create image

“There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”

WorldShouldYearsEndsSelfMoralJourneyDangerousConscienceTemptationMealsTomatoesExtravagantCainWilderLazarus
Author:Annie Dillard
Create image

“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”

WorldKindMeanDoeHas BeensRememberSpiritAnswersPossibilityCallingTrainComplexityTextureExtravagant
Author:Annie Dillard
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

“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 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 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

“She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.”

WorldYearsChildrenLongSelfYoungThreeGrowsLossPayTakenFourSkyFitYears AgoRiversDepthEdgesNineBelovedFour YearsShallowGlancesYoung ChildrenHer SmileSelf Contained
Book:Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image