Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on How ‘A Schedule Defends From Chaos and Whim’)

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American essayist Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1989)

Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on the ‘February Squawks’ of Birds in the Valley)

“The birds have started singing in the valley. Their February squawks and naked chirps are fully fledged now, and long lyrics fly in the air. Birdsong catches in the mountains’ rim and pools in the valley; it threads through forests, it slides down creeks. At the house a wonderful thing happens. The mockingbird that nests each year in the front-yard spruce strikes up his chant in high places, and one of those high places is my chimney. When he sings there, the hollow chimney act as a soundbox, like the careful emptiness inside a cello or violin, and the notes of the song gather fullness and reverberate through the house. He sings a phrase and repeats it exactly; then he sings another and repeats that, then another. The mockingbird’s invention is limitless; he strews newness about as casually as a god. He is tireless, too; toward June he will begin his daily marathon at two in the morning and scarcely pause for breath until eleven at night. I don’t know when he sleeps.” —American essayist Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)

Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on Good Days and Good Lives)

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.” — American poet, essayist and memoirist Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1989)

This makes it all the more important to value those who lead “good lives.” Make them know how important they are to you…now.

 

Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on Redemption)

“Only redemption—restoration, tikkun—can return the sparks of light to their source in the primeval soul; only redemption can restore God’s exiled presence to his being in eternity. Only redemption can reunite an exiled soul with its root. The holy person, however, can hasten redemption and help mend heaven and earth.”—Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (2000)