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" There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows. "
Annie Dillard
Only
Artist
World
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" The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence. "
Annie Dillard
Book
Writing
Blind
" 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
Beauty
Detail
Generosity
" I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else. "
Annie Dillard
More
Housewife
Anything
" As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net. "
Annie Dillard
Work
Everything
Loss
" The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart. "
Annie Dillard
Living
Life
Heart
" Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you. "
Annie Dillard
Spend
Take
You
" You can't test courage cautiously. "
Annie Dillard
Test
You
Courage
" 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
Desk
You
Work
" As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. "
Annie Dillard
Beauty
Pleasure
Religion
" 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
Will
Aim
Nothing
" 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
Me
Sin
You
" 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. "
Annie Dillard
Like
Perfect
Obedience
" There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. "
Annie Dillard
Hard
Lives
Days
" 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 that would not enrage by its triviality? "
Annie Dillard
Time
Dying
Say
" Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. "
Annie Dillard
Think
Alone
Beautiful
" Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. "
Annie Dillard
Soon
First
Excitement
" I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. "
Annie Dillard
World
Myself
Like
" 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
Hands
Days
Chaos
" There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. "
Annie Dillard
Spiritual
Wind
Environmental
" How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. "
Annie Dillard
Course
Our Lives
Days
" Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. "
Annie Dillard
View
Dark
Imagination
" 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
Present
Birthday
Evolution
" Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues. "
Annie Dillard
Issues
Taste
Out
" The surest sign of age is loneliness. "
Annie Dillard
Loneliness
Surest
Sign