Quotes by Annie Dillard

Explore a curated collection of 30 quotes by Annie Dillard. Discover timeless wisdom, insightful thoughts, and memorable words that have inspired readers around the world. Browse through the gallery below and click on any quote to read more.

Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you. — Annie Dillard
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 — Annie Dillard
The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all. — Annie Dillard
For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... ho — Annie Dillard
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 b — Annie Dillard
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believe — Annie Dillard
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. — Annie Dillard
Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream ab — Annie Dillard
An anchorite’s hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church l — Annie Dillard
We can stage our own act on the planet-build our cities on its plains, dam its rivers, plant its topsoils-but our meanin — Annie Dillard
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle f — Annie Dillard
Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternit — Annie Dillard
All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a — Annie Dillard
You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades. — Annie Dillard
On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them — Annie Dillard
The writing that so thrills and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing right next to the band, is barely audible to any — Annie Dillard
It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you — Annie Dillard
Somewhere and I can't find where I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest 'If I did not kn — Annie Dillard
The dedicated life is the life worth living. — Annie Dillard
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand a — Annie Dillard