You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades. - Annie Dillard
The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all. - Annie Dillard
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. - Annie Dillard
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them. - Annie Dillard
Look upstream. Just simply turn around; have you no will? - Annie Dillard
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me? - Annie Dillard
All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives. - Annie Dillard
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. - Annie Dillard
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. - Annie Dillard
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. - Annie Dillard
He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars. - Annie Dillard
On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away. - Annie Dillard
For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning? - Annie Dillard
Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you. - Annie Dillard