Annie Dillard

“All my books started out as extravagant and ended up pure and plain.”

“When I first read the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' when I was 10, I thought I was both.”

“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.”

“Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.”

“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?'”

“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.”

“I'm a housewife: I spend far more time on housework than anything else.”

“How can people think that artists seek a name? There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.”

“There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.”

“Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues.”

“God gave me a talent to draw. I 'owed' it to him to develop the talent.”

“The Pulitzer is more useful than meaningful.”

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

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”

“You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it to the page. The page is jealous and tyrannical; the page is made of time and matter; the page always wins.”