Quotes By Annie Dillard

Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.

God gave me a talent to draw. I 'owed' it to him to develop the talent.

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

Write about winter in the summer.

Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.

I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

The Pulitzer is more useful than meaningful.

You can't test courage cautiously.

It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.