Quote

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?

Annie Dillard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Life
Ordinary
Writer
Induce
State
Draft
Doe
Spinning
States
Internals
Firsts
Internal
First
Peculiar
Writing
Requires

More quotes by Annie Dillard

Image
A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being.
Annie Dillard
Image
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.
Annie Dillard
Image
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.
Annie Dillard
Image
Push it. examine all things intensely and relentlessly.
Annie Dillard
Image
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.
Annie Dillard
Image
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.
Annie Dillard
Image
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
Image
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.
Annie Dillard
Image
I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
Annie Dillard
Image
I think the dying pray at the last not please, but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the door.
Annie Dillard
Image
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
Annie Dillard
Image
It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldnt believe the world existed.
Annie Dillard
Image
We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
Annie Dillard
Image
I couldn't unpeach the peaches.
Annie Dillard
Image
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
Annie Dillard
Image
When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life.
Annie Dillard
Image
The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.
Annie Dillard
Image
Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.
Annie Dillard
Image
The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel.
Annie Dillard
Image
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
Annie Dillard