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"I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267)."
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Exlpore more Perception quotes
"I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody."
"When you are seeing a person, you are not really seeing him. You are seeing his reflection through the mirror of your mind."
"When you read between the lines, you must have bloody good eyesight because I can't see a bloody thing!"
"We see the world as we are."
"I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day."
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
"All shoes have value but shoes do not have same value."
"It was queer how sometimes a child's innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to."
"Things becomes invisible at the very moment I refuse to grant them importance. And while I am utterly ashamed to admit it, many of the most important things in my life are invisible."
Explore more quotes by Annie Dillard
"The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write."
"So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened."
"Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark."
"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."
"There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it."
"For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?"
"She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay."
"As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net."
"I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from no place rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loosen: I walk on my way."
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