Quote

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.

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
Years
Star
Vertical
Make
Saws
Curls
Building
Descent
Stars
Careless
Kindling
Four
Stem
Gutter
Five
Spontaneous
Curl
Story
Roof
Mockingbird
Stories
Straight
Gutters

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if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.
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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 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.
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Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.
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The surest sign of age is loneliness.
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At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting
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Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
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We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall.
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Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance.
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Put yourself out of your misery.
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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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People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.
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He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.
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Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
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The way you live your days is the way you live your life.
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It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.
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Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.
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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.
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