39 Quotes by Annie Dillard about Writing

  • Author Annie Dillard
  • Quote

    Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

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  • Author Annie Dillard
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    All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives.

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  • Author Annie Dillard
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    Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

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  • Author Annie Dillard
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    Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down cautiously, as if with tongs, and wait suspended until the next one finds you: Ah yes, then this; and yes, praise be, then this.

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  • Author Annie Dillard
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    Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”—Annie Dillard

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  • Author Annie Dillard
  • Quote

    At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

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  • Author Annie Dillard
  • Quote

    The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.

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