“All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives.”

American author

Annie Dillard is an American author known for narrative prose in fiction and nonfiction. She published poetry, essays, prose, literary criticism, two novels, and one memoir. Her 1974 book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. From 1980, she taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.