Quote

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.

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
Certain
Sea
World
Mountain
Empty
Listening
Attentive
Ready
Wholly
Stop
Mountains
Waiting
Woods
Point
Wait

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For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.
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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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We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.
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The world is wider in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain and Lazarus.
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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?
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Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.
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I couldn't unpeach the peaches.
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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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Every spring he vowed to quit teaching school, and every summer he missed his pupils and searched for them on the streets.
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I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand.
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You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.
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I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
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