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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

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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
Sensations
Greed
Requires
Less
Spirit
Life
Sensation

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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?
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The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.
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There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
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People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television they prefer books.
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A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.
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The mind itself is an art object. It is a Mondrian canvas onto whose homemade grids it fits its own preselected products. Our knowledge is contextual and only contextual. Ordering and invention coincide: we call their collaboration knowledge.
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Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance.
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Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.
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The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?
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The universe is illusion merely, not one speck of it real, and we are not only its victims, falling always into or smashed by a planet slung by the sun-but also its captives, bound by the mineral-made ropes of our senses.
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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.
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What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
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All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.
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Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
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I couldn't unpeach the peaches.
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I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.
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The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God.
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Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?
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I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
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What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
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