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A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

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
Alone
Looking
Best
Inquires
Loves
Subjects
Writer

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.
Annie Dillard
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When you write, you lay out a line of words. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory.
Annie Dillard
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The life of sensation is the life of greed it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
Annie Dillard
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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
Annie Dillard
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The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.
Annie Dillard
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The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives.
Annie Dillard
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I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.
Annie Dillard
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Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
Annie Dillard
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poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion.
Annie Dillard
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Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.
Annie Dillard
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It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
Annie Dillard
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Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus.
Annie Dillard
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Every spring he vowed to quit teaching school, and every summer he missed his pupils and searched for them on the streets.
Annie Dillard
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Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.
Annie Dillard
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Don't save something good for a later place. Don't hold back from your students, from the poor, don't try to keep anything for yourself 'cause it'll turn to ashes.
Annie Dillard
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On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.
Annie Dillard
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It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.
Annie Dillard
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We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
Annie Dillard
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The novel is a game or joke shared between author and reader.
Annie Dillard
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Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?
Annie Dillard