Choose language

Forgot your password?

Need a Spoofbox account? Create one for FREE!

No subscription or hidden extras

Login


Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down. She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself. I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.


Annie Dillard


#benign-neglect #childhood #curiosity #imagination #parenting



Quote by Annie Dillard

Read through all quotes from Annie Dillard



About Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Quotes



Did you know about Annie Dillard?

Encounters with Chinese Writers
Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984) is a work of journalism. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Its topics mirror the various chapters of the book and include "birth sand China clouds numbers Israel encounters thinker evil and now.

Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She has publiAnnie Dillardd works of poetry essays prose and literary criticism as well as two novels and one memoir.

back to top