Total Eclipse Annie Dillard Quotes & Sayings

I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different. — Annie Dillard

Let's get one thing straight at the beginning. A lunar eclipse simply will not do. You may have seen a partial solar eclipse, but neither will that do. The sun is such a monster that until a few minutes before totality the light from the sun blasts right around the disk of the moon and the Earth is little changed.

Annie Dillard wrote that the difference between a partial eclipse and a total one is the difference between kissing a man and marrying him.

Just so. So people search out totality, no matter how remote the spot. And so we have come to Svalbard.

- from Out in the Cold — Bill Murray