Annie Dillard Quotes

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

Annie Dillard

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out

Annie Dillard

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

Annie Dillard

“Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.”

Annie Dillard

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.

Annie Dillard

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

Annie Dillard