Calamity Jane Quotes


I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. Annie Dillard Age 106
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Annie Dillard Calling 92
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. Annie Dillard Education 89
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. Annie Dillard Course 87
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 Alone 86
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab Are not they both saying Hello We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects we starve ourselves and pray till were blue. Annie Dillard Science 82
We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet Annie Dillard Life 82
I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again. Annie Dillard Again 78
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. Annie Dillard Nature 74
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 Absolute 74
Love so sprang at her she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again. Annie Dillard Reading 65
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. Annie Dillard Careful 62
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 Birthday 62
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents. Annie Dillard Bears 61
Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 59
The surest sign of age is loneliness. Annie Dillard age 55
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? Annie Dillard Beauty 54
Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone. Annie Dillard alone 54
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 Hell 51
The surest sign of age is loneliness. Annie Dillard Age 47
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. Annie Dillard Beauty 44
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. Annie Dillard Self 43
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. Annie Dillard Imagination 43
Natures silence is its one remark and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The Chiense say that we live in the world of ten thousand things. Each of the ten thousand things cries out to us precisely nothing. Annie Dillard Nature 42
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 Aim 41
When I teach, I preach. I thump the Bible. I exhort my students morally. I talk to them about the dedicated life. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 40
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 Uncategorized 40
He judged the instant and let go he flung himself loose into the stars. Annie Dillard Fiction 38
According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 37
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 Belief 37
Get to work. 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 Imagination 36
The Pulitzer is more useful than meaningful. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 35
If she had known how much her first halfinch beginning to let go would take and how long her noticing and renouncing owning and her turning her habits and beginning the slimmest selfmastery whose end was nowhere in sight would she have begun Annie Dillard Self improvement 35
I set up and staged hundreds of endsoftheworld and watched enthralled as they played themselves out. Annie Dillard World 34
Â An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Inuit earnestly, “did you tell me?” Annie Dillard Religion 33
Write about winter in the summer. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 33
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. Annie Dillard Grace 33
So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book he intended several urgent and vivid points many of which he sacrificed as the books form hardened. Annie Dillard Writing craft 33
Were the earth smooth our brains would be smooth as well we would wake blink walk two steps to get the whole picture and lapse into a dreamless sleep. Annie Dillard Nature 32
Could two live that way Could two live under the wild rose and explore by the pond so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other and as received and as unchallenged as falling snow Annie Dillard Nature 32
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. Annie Dillard Book 31
The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 31
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 Uncategorized 31
It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere. Annie Dillard Age 31
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. Annie Dillard Uncategorized 31
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 Catching 30
Silence is not our heritage but our destiny we live where we want to live. Annie Dillard Silence 29
Under her high brows she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls schools he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you. Annie Dillard Women 29
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generations short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air and feeling it hit. Annie Dillard Awareness 28
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home dear and familiar stone hearth and garden and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Annie Dillard Earth 28

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Calamity Jane Quotes

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