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Annie Dillard Biography

Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) 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. From 1980, Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.

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Annie Dillard Quotes

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.

Cities, City, Consciousness, Curse, Self, Sophistication

Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

Puff, Spirit, Sail, Spread, Till

Possibly everyone now dead considered his own death as a freak accident, a mistake. Some bad luck caused it. Every enterprising man jack of them, and every sunlit vigorous woman and child, too, who had seemed so alive and pleased, was cold as a meat hook, and new chattering people trampled their bones unregarding, and rubbed their hands together and got to work improving their prospects till their own feet slipped and they went under themselves. . . Every place was a tilting edge.

Accident, Children, Men, Mistake, Under, Woman

He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.

Instant, Judged, Let, Letting Go, Loose, Stars

Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

Expression, Free, Life, Rip, Task, Trying

Theirs is the mystery of continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection.

Fixed, Perfection, Pressure, Providence, Vision

The creative process obtains in all creative acts. So if I'm painting suddenly I'll see something that I didn't see before.

Creative, Obtains, Painting, Process, See

Push it. examine all things intensely and relentlessly.

All Things, Examine, Intensely, Push, Relentlessly, Things

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

Beach, Beautiful, Bring, Natures, Noticed, Weather

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

Dublin, Finn, New York, Norway, Summer, Writing

Dan Gerber is one of our finest living poets.

Dan, Finest, Gerber, Poet, Poets

The world knew you before you knew the world.

World

The morning woods were utterly new. A strong yellow light pooled beneath the trees; my shadow appeared and vanished on the path, since a third of the trees I walked under were still bare, a third spread a luminous haze wherever they grew, and another third blocked the sun with new, whole leaves. The snakes were out - I saw a bright, smashed one on the path - and the butterflies were vaulting and furling about; the phlox was at its peak, and even the evergreens looked greener, newly created and washed.

Butterfly, Greener, Morning, Snakes, Strong, Trees

We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.

Hiking, Journey, Might, Place, Planet

People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

Book, Lazy, People, Prefer, Television

Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.

Art, Drags, Labrador, Labradors, Traffic

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.

Extravagant, Gesture, Gestures, Life, Stuff

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books. . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

Art, Attention, Book, Product, Reader, Writing

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

Crowds, Family, Father, Irrepressible, Mother

I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.

Eye, Love, Pain, Running, Sorry

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