Annie Dillard Quotes

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?'
Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard

Lives, Days, Spend

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.
Annie Dillard

Time, Days, Both

The surest sign of age is loneliness.
Annie Dillard

Age, Loneliness, Sign

Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.
Annie Dillard

Past, Nothing, Through

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
Annie Dillard

Self, Himself, Fit

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

Education, Live, Remember

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Annie Dillard

Love, Beauty, Religion

Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.
Annie Dillard

Rock, Perfect, Flowers

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
Annie Dillard

Life, Heart, Give

You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins.
Annie Dillard

Time, Jealous, Made

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.
Annie Dillard

Birthday, Bitter, Present

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
Annie Dillard

Afternoon, Spend

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.
Annie Dillard

Age, True, Long

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

Nature, Spiritual, Energy

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.
Annie Dillard

Person, Body, Culture

All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.
Annie Dillard

Started, Books, Pure

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

Dark, Memory, Wants

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
Annie Dillard

Life, Work, Everything

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.
Annie Dillard

Best, Writing, Grace

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

Alone, Soul, Mistake

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
Annie Dillard

Book, Excitement, Writer

God gave me a talent to draw. I 'owed' it to him to develop the talent.
Annie Dillard

God, Him, Talent

How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.
Annie Dillard

Artist, Name, Artists

I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore.
Annie Dillard

Dance, Anymore, Total

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Author

Born: April 30, 1945

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Find on Amazon: Annie Dillard

Cite this Page: Citation

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