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Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them.

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
Performed
Grace
Beauty
Whether
Sense

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.
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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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If even rock was interesting, if even this ugliness was worth whole shelves at the library, required sophisticated tools to study, and inspired grown men to crack mountains and saw crystals--then what wasn't?
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The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.
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I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.
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We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.
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You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
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Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?
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Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
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Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
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Write as if you are dying.
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I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore.
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The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
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The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.
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Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do.
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You can't test courage cautiously.
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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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Don't save something good for a later place. Don't hold back from your students, from the poor, don't try to keep anything for yourself 'cause it'll turn to ashes.
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There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?
Annie Dillard
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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