Quote

Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.

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
Never
Opponents
Would
Admire
World
Walking
Taking
Eyes
Eye
Away
Opponent
Without
Ending

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains
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All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.
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It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.
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You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical the page is made of time and matter the page always wins.
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You do what you do out of your private love of the thing itself.
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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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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Old memories are very easy to get except that once you write about something you've destroyed it.
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.
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I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand.
Annie Dillard
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It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.
Annie Dillard
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These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
Annie Dillard
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We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us.
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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I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?
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As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Annie Dillard