Quote

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

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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
World
Extravagant
Wider
Directions
Raising
Bright
Lazarus
Bitter
Hay
Dangerous
Cain
Making
Tomatoes

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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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The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel.
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I had good innings, as the British say. I wrote for 38 years at the top of my form, and I wanted to quit on a high note.
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I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore.
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Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.
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Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.
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The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.
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What is a house but a bigger skin, and a neighborhood map but the world's skin ever expanding?
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The creatures I seek do not want to be seen.
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Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
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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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People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.
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How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
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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.
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About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
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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.
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The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.
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I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind.
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There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.
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When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.
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