Annie Dillard Quotes

Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame

There's not even room enough to be anywhere/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.../I was born here and I'll die here against my will/I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still.

The dark covers me and I cannot run now.

Nobody is going to move. Here is the story folks.

The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

Time seems to stop in certain places.

I have no mouth, and I must scream.

If there's not any endgame, we're in quicksand. We take one more step, and we're still there, and there's no way out.

I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity.

There's nothing like standing in a place and wanting nothing so much as to change but simply not being able to.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision

I've given up trying to reason with people who despise me.

Estragon: Nothing to be done.

I'm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly it's too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I don't know what I'm doing and I'm being told what to do.

When you can't climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it home.

Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

I'm not yet desperate enough to do anything about the conditions that are making me desperate.

We have two useless gods who never leave our island, but like to dwell in it constantly, Poverty and Helplessness.

The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

If all I can say is I'm not in this swamp, I'm not in this swamp then there is not a rope in front of me and there is not an alligator behind me and there is not a girl sitting at the edge eating a hot dog and if I believe that, then dying would be the only answer because then Death couldn't come and say Peachy to me anymore and after all she has a brother who believes in hope.