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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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Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Flicks
Beetle
Beetles
Encountered
Merciful
Feet
Men
More quotes by Annie Dillard
The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain and Lazarus.
Annie Dillard
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
Annie Dillard
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
The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.
Annie Dillard
People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.
Annie Dillard
Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed.
Annie Dillard
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
Annie Dillard
Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle.
Annie Dillard
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.
Annie Dillard
When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life.
Annie Dillard
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
Annie Dillard
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
Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.
Annie Dillard
As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
Annie Dillard
The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
Annie Dillard
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
Annie Dillard
I think the dying pray at the last not please, but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the door.
Annie Dillard
I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.
Annie Dillard
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?
Annie Dillard
No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.
Annie Dillard