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I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface and exit through it.

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
Edges
Surface
Cutting
Opener
Use
Exit
Wanted
Hole
World
Hopes
Rough
Holes

More quotes by 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.
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The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.
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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I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.
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I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not.
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The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.
Annie Dillard
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Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merely, and a wandering without end.
Annie Dillard
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if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.
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Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
Annie Dillard
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Painters work from the ground up. The latest version of a painting overlays earlier versions, and obliterates them. Writers, on the other hand, work from left to right. The discardable chapters are on the left.
Annie Dillard
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Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.
Annie Dillard
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He judged the instant and let go he flung himself loose into the stars.
Annie Dillard
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I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.
Annie Dillard
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Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven the brightest oriole fades into leaves.
Annie Dillard
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Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.
Annie Dillard
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On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.
Annie Dillard
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People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television they prefer books.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard