Annie Dillard (b.1945,) original name Meta Annie Doak, is an American writer best known for meditative essays on the natural world. She is famous for her blend of literary, philosophical, theological, and scientific themes, regardless of the genre in which they appear.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dillard began writing poetry in high school and then studied English in college. After writing a master’s thesis on Henry David Thoreau‘s Walden, she moved to a cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. She began keeping journals of her daily walks and reflected upon everything she saw, and on theology and literature. Her journals became the basis of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974;) this won the Pulitzer Prize when Dillard was just 29 years old. Critics hailed the work as an American original in the spirit of Walden.
Dillard’s Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974,) Holy the Firm (1977,) and Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982) explore similar themes. Living by Fiction (1982,) Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984,) and The Writing Life (1989) present her views of literary artistry and the writer’s role in society.
Dillard’s later works include For the Time Being (1999,) a collection of narrative nonfiction similar to Holy the Firm, and The Maytrees (2007,) her second novel.
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You can’t test courage cautiously.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Courage
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Carpe-diem, Action
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
—Annie Dillard
The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
—Annie Dillard
Topics: Giving, Dedication, Commitment, Romance
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
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
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
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