Best Quotes from An American Childhood by Annie Dillard with Page Numbers

"What a marvel it was that the day so often introduced itself with a firm footfall nearby."

"What a marvel it was that so many times a day the world, like a church bell, reminded me to recall and contemplate the durable fact that I was here, and had awakened once more to find myself set down in a going world."

"Who could ever tire of this heart-stopping transition, of this breakthrough shift between seeing and knowing you see, between being and knowing you be?"

"It drives you to a life of concentration, it does, a life in which effort draws you down so very deep that when you surface you twist up exhilarated with a yelp and a gasp."

"What a gift at the moment of opening it!"

"Time streamed in full flood beside me on the kitchen floor; time roared raging beside me down its swollen banks; and when I woke I was so startled I fell in."

"The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, and I myself was one such item—a child walking up the sidewalk, whom anyone could see or ignore."

"I could be connected to the outer world by reason, if I chose, or I could yield to what amounted to a narrative fiction, to a tale of terror whispered to me by the blood in my ears."

"You have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive."

"In Pittsburgh, during the rest of the year, Henry went home every night to the Homewood section."

I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.

How long does it take to draw a baseball mitt? As much time as you care to give it.

For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.

They were learning to see. I had spent the equivalent of years of my life, I thought, in concentration camps, in ghettoes, in prison camps, and in lifeboats.

Loss came around with the seasons, blew into the house when you opened the windows...and came creeping up the basement stairs.

The world afforded an inexhaustible wealth of projects to concentrate on.

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside her skin and skull.

Time itself bent you and cracked you on its wheel.

It felt like I was on the edge of a discovery, and that there was always that next question worth asking.

I could see my future self, all my loves and losses ahead of me, but for now, I was just thirteen.

"The man who dies rich, dies disgraced."

"Let there be light."

"A man of wealth should give it away for the public good, and not weaken his sons with it."

"I felt I was most myself here... I could lose myself here..."

"The point where his head met his spine was the point where spirit met matter."

"What else can you risk with all your might but your life?"

"I was a boulder blocking my own path."

"I wanted beauty bare of import; I liked language in strips like pennants."

"I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it."

"We grow to the sound of the wind playing his flutes in our hair."