I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, ne… - Annie Dillard

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I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

Annie Dillard

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belief humility epiphany light gaps energy god religion walking science power consciousness joy mystery curiosity joyfulness spirit poet nature the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it illumination fate praise wonder mindfulness exploration exultant faith grace prayer multiplicity freedom seeking beauty watching creation life-force free philosophy growth praying poem seeing fearless poetry disbelief amen enoughness hallelujah intricacy joyful living-in-the-present-moment philosopher-s-stone prayers religious-diversity stalking-the-gaps tolerance fire soul

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About Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard (born 30 April 1945) is an American author born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her non-fiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1974. She has since published ten other books. Her most recent is the novel The Maytrees (June 2007).

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Birth Name: Annie Doak

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Ray Bradbury Louise Erdrich Henry Miller Virginia Woolf Jim Harrison

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The death of self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the will's spirits and the intellect's chatter: it is waiting like a hollow bell with a stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is the thing.

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life — the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives — as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch — with an electric hiss and cry — this speckled mineral sphere, our present world.

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some in… - Annie Dillard

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