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

—Annie Dillard

About Annie Dillard

Portrait of Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard (née Doak; April 30, 1945 – September 15, 2026) was an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and nonfiction. She published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 book Pilgrim at Tinker...

More quotations from Annie Dillard

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

—Annie Dillard

art summer winter

The dying must often feel this way—steaming along just fine, while on ahead someone has torn up the rails.

—Annie Dillard

I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else—but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence.

—Annie Dillard

In the Koran, Allah asks, "The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest?" It's a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms?… If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest?

—Annie Dillard

universe earth heaven

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

—Annie Dillard

money poverty thrift

History

5 Apr 2023 Added