Quote

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.

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
Children
Gratuitous
Things
Equally
Surprise
Wonder
Sense
Young
Wells
Well
Bewilder

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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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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if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.
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I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.
Annie Dillard
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Are you living just a little and calling that life?
Annie Dillard
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The irrational haunts the metaphysical.
Annie Dillard
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I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.
Annie Dillard
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There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
Annie Dillard
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Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurling shuttle.
Annie Dillard
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Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.
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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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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What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
Annie Dillard
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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.
Annie Dillard
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A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.
Annie Dillard
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I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.
Annie Dillard
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It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
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.
Annie Dillard