Explore Quotes by Annie Dillard

What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch--with an electric hiss and cry--this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.

Tonight I walked around the pond scaring frogs; a couple of them jumped off, going, in effect, eek, and most grunted, and the pond was still. But one big frog, bright green like a poster-paint frog, didn't jump, so I waved my arm and stamped to scare it, and it jumped suddenly, and I jumped, and then everything in the pond jumped, and I laughed and laughed.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

It's about waking up. A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she's living. She dreams along, loving the exuberant life of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious to herself -- and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive. She notices her own awareness. And she notices that she is set down here, mysteriously, in a going world.

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do.

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.

I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.