Annie Dillard Quotes

Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: waking up.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows 'I am!' No one can deny his own being.

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

Pause now to ask yourself the following question: 'Am I dreaming or awake, right now?' Be serious, really try to answer the question to the best of your ability and be ready to justify your answer.

If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.

Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.

We are never aware of the present; each instant of living becomes perceptible only when it is past, so that in a sense we do not live at all, but only remember living.

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.

There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.

Children may not notice the positive moments in life unless we point them out to them.

How do you know, right now, that you are aware of being aware, or conscious?

In my definition of consciousness, consciousness is the same thing as life. What wisdom traditions also call spirit.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

To be awake is to be alive.

Life is a state of consciousness.

Life is but thought.

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.

Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.