There was only silence. It was the silence of matter caught in the act and embarrassed. There were no cells moving, and yet there were cells. I could see the shape of the land, how it lay holding silence. Its poise and its stillness were unendurable, like the ring of the silence you hear in your skull when you're little and notice you're living the ring which resumes later in life when you're sick.

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.