Quote

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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Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Death
Turn
Monster
Careening
Running
Seeing
Nowhere
Outwit
Doe
Dies
Beast
Grinds
Care
Chance
Monsters
Programmed
Live
Turns
Fixed
Robot
Trying
Free
Save
Halt
Every
Universe
Blind
Grind
Lives
Kill
Robots

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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We are here to witness. There is nothing else to do with those mute materials we do not need. Until Larry teaches his stone to talk, until God changes his mind, or until the pagan gods slip back to their hilltop groves, all we can do with the whole inhuman array is watch it.
Annie Dillard
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Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot our planet alone has death.
Annie Dillard
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I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.
Annie Dillard
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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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I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.
Annie Dillard
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We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
Annie Dillard
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The interior life is often stupid.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.
Annie Dillard
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The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper I cannot quite make it out.
Annie Dillard
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What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.
Annie Dillard
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You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
Annie Dillard
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I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
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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You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it... The vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is, by the time you have finished, forgotten. It has been replaced by this changeling.
Annie Dillard