Quote

I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

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
Book
Pursuit
First
Struggle
Writing
Imagine
Years
Read
People
Write
Attempts
Place
Struggling
Cannot
Appeal
Firsts
Appeals

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The creative process obtains in all creative acts. So if I'm painting suddenly I'll see something that I didn't see before.
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Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein starts shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.
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Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
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I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
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I think the dying pray at the last not please, but thank you, as a guest thanks his host at the door.
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[Insects] are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship.
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The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
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Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf
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poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion.
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Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus.
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How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
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By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.
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Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
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Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
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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.
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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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Don't save something good for a later place. Don't hold back from your students, from the poor, don't try to keep anything for yourself 'cause it'll turn to ashes.
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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Make connections let rip and dance where you can.
Annie Dillard
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You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.
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