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I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

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
Moment
Moments
Whole
Lifted
Never
Bell
Life
Struck
Bells
Inspiring
Knew

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I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.
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Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.
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Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.
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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.
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I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.
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We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
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Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.
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Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears.
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Dan Gerber is one of our finest living poets.
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The courage of children and beasts is a function of innocence.
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Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.
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A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.
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Old memories are very easy to get except that once you write about something you've destroyed it.
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If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
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I still try to keep my eyes open. I'm always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I've not seen one
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Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
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We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.
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You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
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[Insects] are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship.
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Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood aim for the chopping block.
Annie Dillard