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Annie Dillard Quotes
1945–2026 United States
Annie Dillard (April 30, 1945 – September 15, 2026) was an American author born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her non-fiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1974.
United States 20th-century poets Academics Authors Essayists Also known as: Dillard, Annie
Random Annie Dillard quote
8 quotes
There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.
Holy the Firm (1977)
For most creatures, being parasitized is a way of life—if you call that living.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1976)
No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1976)
Whenever a work's structure is intentionally one of its own themes, another of its themes is art.
Ted Nelson in Literary Machines (1982)
The intricacy of Ellery and aphids multiplied mindlessly into tons and light-years is more than extravagance; it is holocaust, parody, glut.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
At first the amoebae look like muscae volitantes, those curled moving spots you seem to see in your eyes when you stare at a distant wall. Then I see the amoebae as drops of water congealed, blusish, translucent, like chips of sky in the bowl.
Even such sophisticated mammals as the great predator cats occasionally eat their cubs. A mother cat will be observed licking the area around the umbilical cord of the helpless newborn. She licks, she licks, she licks until something snaps in her brain, and she begins eating, starting there, at the vulnerable belly.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1976)
Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.
An American Childhood (1987)