American - Author | April 30, 1945 -
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Annie Dillard
LoveBeautyReligionPleasureSoon
As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
LifeWorkLossRememberGoAgainst
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
EducationLiveLearnRememberWould
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.
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People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
LoveAloneBestPeopleLookingSame
I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
MyselfFreeProcessLogicBackAway
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.
PastYouWoodNothingAimWill
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
WorldSelfPaintServantPainterHe
Write as if you were dying.
YouWriteDyingWere
Write about winter in the summer.
WinterSummerWriteAbout
The writer studies literature, not the world.
WorldLiteratureWriterStudies
Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.
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