“I am no scientist. I explore the neighbourhood. An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he will have learned instead is how to fake it: he'll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighbourhood, view the landscape, to discover at least WHERE it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can't learn why.”

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About Annie Dillard

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.

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Books by Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

1990

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The writing life

1998

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The Maytrees CD

2007

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Teaching a Stone to Talk

1982

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For the Time Being

1999

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