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There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.

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
Chickens
Heroic
Generation
Generations
Pure
Times
Always
Formerly

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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 life of sensation is the life of greed it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
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You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
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We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.
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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.
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We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
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I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.
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A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.
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Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven the brightest oriole fades into leaves.
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Time is the continuous loop, the snakeskin with scales endlessly overlapping without beginning or end, or time is an ascending spiral if you will, like a child's toy Slinky.
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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
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You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.
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Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
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There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
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For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?
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The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.
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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.
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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.
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Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.
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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.
Annie Dillard