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
people church cheerful
Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?
running believe book
It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.
life positive thinking
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
seasons
These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
jest made earnest
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
dog pain book
Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.
pain drunk interesting
You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.
rip expression trying
Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.
secret done divinity
Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensibl e earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.
addiction new-day-new-beginning new-life-new-beginning
I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
writing grace looks
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.
time men grace
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
beautiful real chimneys
The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?
giving lost
Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.