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I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.

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
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Nibbled
Getting
Frayed
Age
Eaten
Done
Survivor
World
Aging
Fallen
Eating
Along

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About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
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The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper I cannot quite make it out.
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I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.
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Time is the continuous loop, the snakeskin with scales endlessly overlapping without beginning or end, or time is an ascending spiral if you will, like a child's toy Slinky.
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The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
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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.
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There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
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These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.
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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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If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair... or go into business. You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
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The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.
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You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.
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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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How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
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All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.
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I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.
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A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
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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.
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You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.
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