Teaching a Stone to Talk

Reviews / Votes

Dillard opens our eyes to the world and to new ways of articulating what we see -- GEOFF DYER Annie Dillard is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings generally get to be * * New York Times * * Among the greatest nature writers who have ever lived . . . Keen, urgent and impassioned, her subject is life itself, in all its teeming and marvellous forms -- OLIVIA LAING It was Annie Dillard who got me, before it was too late, to pay attention to where I was before I lost it -- RICHARD HOLLOWAY Annie Dillard's words are the outpouring of a brilliant mind tempered by a pleading heart. Her distinctive voice and incandescent imagery lifts us to heights few writers can ever hope to aspire to -- JOHN LISTER-KAYE Superb . . . Annie Dillard silver-streaks out of the blue and archingly transcends all other writers of our day in all the simple, intimate, and beautiful ways of the natural master -- BUCKMINSTER FULLER Dillard's style is spirited and gale-force. She raps out her opinions; lyrical, gleeful, cymbal-clashing, peppery. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she evokes better than anyone else -- ROBERT MACFARLANE Annie Dillard's books are like comets, like celestial events that remind us that the reality we inhabit is itself a celestial event -- MARILYNNE ROBINSON Annie Dillard's wise and funny essays remind us of what a profound blessing life can be if we do but one thing: Pay attention -- GARY TRUDEAU In essay after essay, Annie Dillard demonstrates the mystical art of using exactitude, condensation, and clarity to intimate turbulence, rapture, and plenty. . . The landscape of nonfiction and American letters looks barren without her radiance -- MAGGIE NELSON