“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.”

— Annie Dillard

Source: The Writing Life

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days." by Annie Dillard?

Annie Dillard 63

American writer 1945

Related quotes

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

The Writing Life (1989)

“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“It was my job to catch our Jewish enemies like fish in a net and transport them to their final destination.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

As quoted in The Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb (2013). ISBN 978-0-545-56239-3.

“Chaos has her moods and whims, that’s all. As I told you, she cannot remain stable. It is in her nature to be forever changing.”

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

“While it is in the nature of Law,” Alisaard explained, “to be forever fixed. The Balance is there to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos ever gain complete ascendancy, for the one offers sterility while the other offers only sensation.”
Book 3, Chapter 1 (p. 626)
Erekosë, The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.”

John Webster The Devil's Law Case

The Devil's Law Case (1623).

“On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Ch. 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy
Context: On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.
We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked us whence we came.