Quote

We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall.

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
Never
Waking
Life
Useless
Private
Insensible
Sleep
Recall
Half
Recalls
Water
Mention
Lives
Waters
Live
Sleeping

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When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.
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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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If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
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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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The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel.
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Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.
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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.
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Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
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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 secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.
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Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed.
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Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.
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I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.
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It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.
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We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
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What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
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The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.
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The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
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Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.
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Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.
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