Annie Dillard

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. ”

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net. ”

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. ”

Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone. ”

I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. ”

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. ”

The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance. ”

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? ”

I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else. ”

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere. ”