Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?
What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?
Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?
We still and always want waking.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”
Yet another beautiful passage from Barnstorming, one of my few absolute must-read blogs.
I can always depend on Annie Dillard and you to illuminate my day! Thank you, Lindsey.
love, Emily
This is so gorgeous and true.
I ask myself this question each time I sit down to write, especially these days when silence is not an alternative.