What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
Annie DillardEvery book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
Annie DillardWhen you open a book,โ the sentimental library posters said, โanything can happen.โ This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyoneโs way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.
Annie Dillard