Annie Dillard quotes

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.

Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

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.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

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

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

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.

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.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.

You can't test courage cautiously.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

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?'