Quote

I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind.

Annie Dillard

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Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Fields
Acres
Mind
Blades
Never
Identical
Men
Forest
Boggle
Forests
Spruce
Grass
Acre
Mets
Poppies
Field
Shaken

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No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
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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.
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What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.
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At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.
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The novel is a game or joke shared between author and reader.
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The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.
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Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
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There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
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A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
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There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
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Then why did you tell me?
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Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.
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The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God.
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In literary history, generation follows generation in a rage.
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Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.
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Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
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The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
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Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do.
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Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
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