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.
Annie DillardRead
You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of stillness and listening in order to understand the deeper essence of existence.
In this quote, Annie Dillard reflects on the profound experience of emptiness and active listening, suggesting that by quieting the mind and being patient, one can perceive a deeper truth that transcends verbal expression. The 'hum' she refers to symbolizes a universal connection present in all things, implying that true understanding comes from embracing silence and awareness rather than seeking external validation or noise.
Themes
SilenceListeningAwarenessEmptinessConnection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a meditation workshop to emphasize the importance of listening to one's inner self.
More from Annie Dillard
All quotes →Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.
Annie DillardRead
Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.
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Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
Annie DillardRead
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.
Annie DillardRead
To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.
Annie DillardRead
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