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
real writing small-rooms
Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
mean calling texture
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.
book people lazy
People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.
lying color stuff
What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
book light way
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
generations literature rage
In literary history, generation follows generation in a rage.
nature believe common-sense
Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.
stupid simple eggs
The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness... The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious mind will hush if you give it an egg.
book imagination people
What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. ... What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.
book imagination world
Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.
loss remembers-everything remember
As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
inspirational inspiring travel
Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
time loneliness age
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
way helping possibility
No one can help you if you're stuck in a work. Only you can figure a way out, because only you can see the work's possibilities.