Annie Dillard

A schedule defends from chaos and whim.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.