Quotes by Annie Dillard

About Annie Dillard:

Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 rep...

Annie Dillard

Get to work. 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

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.

Annie Dillard

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said "It is the trade entering his body.

Annie Dillard

One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to sa...

Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. 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 lab...

Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

Annie Dillard

Young women are closer to the time when they were manipulative and childish and they don't let their babies manipulate them as much as older mothers do. These are only my conclusions from watching children in grocery stores. I love to watch them work...

Annie Dillard

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for liter...

Annie Dillard

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to s...

Annie Dillard

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.

Annie Dillard

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.

Annie Dillard

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.

Annie Dillard

I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.

Annie Dillard

You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins.

Annie Dillard

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person tha...

Annie Dillard

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Annie Dillard

The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance.

Annie Dillard

Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.

Annie Dillard

You can't test courage cautiously.

Annie Dillard

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

Annie Dillard

Author Bio

  • NameAnnie Dillard
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornApril 30, 1945
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author; Novelist
  • WorksThe Maytrees
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize For General Non-Fiction