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
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.
jest made earnest
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
wings way cliffs
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair... or go into business. You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
skulls people feelings
The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item...the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control.
schedules chaos catching
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.
wings may bucks
Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and a wing.
peaches
I couldn't unpeach the peaches.
subjects
A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
more-time housewife housework
I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.
grateful past light
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.
keep-learning
why did I have to keep learning this same thing over and over?
vacation people remember
People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.