A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life—the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives—as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life—the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives—as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote
Similar Quotes by annie-dillard

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

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

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

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
Save QuoteView Quote

It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

You can't test courage cautiously.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote

There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary a batch of technical skills and equipment and perhaps a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things of their complexity fascination and unexpectedness.

Annie Dillard
Save QuoteView Quote
Related Topics to annie-dillard Quotes