Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard
Annie Dillardis an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut...
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth30 April 1945
CityPittsburgh, PA
greed spirit sensations
The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
thinking soul holiness
Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears.
beach ocean sea
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
thinking artist names
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.
views tunnels darkness
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.
courage insperational bravery
You can't test courage cautiously.
prayer wings water
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.
reading mystery ifs
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
feet tennis balls
I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.
addiction new-day-new-beginning new-life-new-beginning
I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
memories work writing
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
heart brain break
You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
caring human-nature humans
Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do.
spiritual air wind
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.