Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.
Annie Dillard The Maytrees
(0 Reviews)

In Annie Dillard's "The Maytrees," the protagonist experiences a profound realization about love, suggesting a depth to her feelings that she believes is rarely depicted in literature. She feels that no one has truly captured the essence of love as she has experienced it, leading her to question the existing narratives about love in literary works. This introspection prompts her to reconsider her understanding and appreciation of literature.

As a result, she resolves to revisit all the books she's read in hopes of finding a reflection of her unique emotions. This desire for deeper understanding highlights a universal quest for connection and the inadequacy often felt with the representations of love in stories. Dillard beautifully captures the complexity of the human experience regarding love and literature's ability to encapsulate, or fail to encapsulate, that experience.

In Annie Dillard's "The Maytrees," the protagonist experiences a profound realization about love, suggesting a depth to her feelings that she believes is rarely depicted in literature. She feels that no one has truly captured the essence of love as she has experienced it, leading her to question the existing narratives about love in literary works. This introspection prompts her to reconsider her understanding and appreciation of literature.

As a result, she resolves to revisit all the books she's read in hopes of finding a reflection of her unique emotions. This desire for deeper understanding highlights a universal quest for connection and the inadequacy often felt with the representations of love in stories. Dillard beautifully captures the complexity of the human experience regarding love and literature's ability to encapsulate, or fail to encapsulate, that experience.

Categories
reading
Book
The Maytrees
Author
Annie Dillard
Votes
0
Page views
23
Update
March 30, 2025
Report
Report a Problem

Rate the Quote

Add Comment & Review

User Reviews

Based on 0 reviews
5 Star
0
4 Star
0
3 Star
0
2 Star
0
1 Star
0
Add Comment & Review
We'll never share your email with anyone else.
More »

Other quotes in The Maytrees

Nothing rose to plug the gap, to address what some called "ultimate concerns," unless you count the arts, the arts that lacked both epistemological methods and accountability, and that drew nutty people, or drove them nuts.
Annie Dillard The Maytrees
Nothing rose to plug the gap, to address what some called "ultimate concerns," unless you count the arts, the arts that lacked both epistemological methods and accountability, and that drew nutty people, or drove them nuts.
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
Annie Dillard The Maytrees
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.
Annie Dillard The Maytrees
Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.
Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.
Annie Dillard The Maytrees
Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.
More »

Other quotes in reading

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?-Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland
What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?-Alice in Wonderland
Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.
Mark Helprin Freddy and Fredericka
Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.
{When} he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
Mark Helprin Winter's Tale
{When} he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
Anne Fadiman Ex Libris: Confessions of...
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination.
Eudora Welty On Writing
Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination.
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
Anne Lamott Bird by Bird: Some...
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
More »

Popular quotes

Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her. Mitch Albom
All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last. Alexander McCall Smith
The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven – Bertie's age – the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. {All figures courtesy of Scottish Government Advice Leaflet: Handling your Money.} Alexander McCall Smith
In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days. Alexander McCall Smith
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament. Sebastian Faulks
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search. And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end? I shrugged. You see? He leaned back. He smiled. When you come to the end, that's where God begins. Mitch Albom
Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes. Mitch Albom
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. Mitch Albom
we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality-and, in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization. Mitch Albom
But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind. David Mitchell
All Categories »

Categories

love
inspirational
history
soul