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
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
It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. Annie Dillard
People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Annie Dillard
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. Annie Dillard
When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life. Annie Dillard
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. Annie Dillard
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
How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows. 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
Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone. Annie Dillard
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
When I first read the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' when I was 10, I thought I was both. Annie Dillard
'Fecundity' is an ugly word for an ugly subject. It is ugly, at least, in the eggy animal world. I don't think it is for plants. Annie Dillard