Quote

Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.

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
Would
Tasks
Dwindle
Like
Inside
Unexpressed
Joy
Dissipate
Fire
Rip
Strong
Waited
Wanted
Noticed
Enough
Required
Long
Task

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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.
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You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.
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Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.
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Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
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A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being.
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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.
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By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.
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A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
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