Quote

But enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.

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
Lasts
Depths
Last
Sigh
Home
Height
Latitudes
Back
Relief
Latitude
Enough
Depth
Heights
Even
Glory
Bounce
Mystery
Splendor
Turns
Hurry

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The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.
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When you write, you lay out a line of words. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory.
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I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.
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At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.
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Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.
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I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
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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.
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We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us.
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Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merely, and a wandering without end.
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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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It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
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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'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.
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Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.
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We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
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It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.
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Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
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I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.
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Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.
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Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.
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