According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body. – Annie Dillard
Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone. – Annie Dillard
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?’ – Annie Dillard
‘Fecundity’ is an ugly word for an ugly subject. It is ugly, at least, in the eggy animal world. I don’t think it is for plants. – Annie Dillard
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. – Annie Dillard
Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block. – Annie Dillard
I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. – Annie Dillard
When I first read the words ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ when I was 10, I thought I was both. – Annie Dillard
It makes more sense to write one big book – a novel or nonfiction narrative – than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. – Annie Dillard
A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. – Annie Dillard
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. – Annie Dillard
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. – Annie Dillard
If you’re going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself. – Annie Dillard