Annie Dillard Quotes

A collection of quotes by Annie Dillard.

Annie Dillard is an acclaimed American author known for her poetic and insightful writings on nature and spirituality. Born on April 30, 1945, in Pennsylvania, Dillard has written multiple novels, essays, and memoirs that have captivated readers with her keen observations and lyrical writing style. She received widespread recognition for her Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" in 1974. Dillard's works often explore themes of mortality, ecology, and the human experience, establishing her as a prominent voice in contemporary literature. With her evocative prose and introspective storytelling, Dillard continues to inspire readers and writers alike.

The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together lik

The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast bro

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.

Wisdom Life Spirituality Inspirational Life Lessons

You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a

You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without god. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.

Life Religion Spirituality

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sen

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Beauty Grace Annie Dillard

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all

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.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.

Life Love Science Unity Complexity Sea

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this ag

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catc

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room wit

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize

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.

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looki

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I

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.

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your sou

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.

Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to

Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.' Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?'

You can't test courage cautiously.

You can't test courage cautiously.

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I s

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice b

It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination. If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.