The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Romance, Commitment, Dedication, Giving
You can’t test courage cautiously.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Courage
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. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part.
—Annie Dillard
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Action, Carpe-diem
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.
—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. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then—and only then—it is handed to you.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Writing
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
—Annie Dillard
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
Alice Walker American Novelist, Activist
Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
Isabel Allende Chilean Novelist
Joan Didion American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist
Anne Lamott American Novelist
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Joyce Maynard American Novelist
Carol Shields Canadian Author, Academic
Andre Norton American Science Fiction Writer