"I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again"
About this Quote
Memory doesn’t arrive as a continuous film in Annie Dillard’s line; it comes as shards, and the self has to be assembled from whatever flashes manage to stick. “I woke in bits” refuses the comforting myth of a stable childhood essence waiting to be uncovered. Instead, Dillard treats consciousness as an intermittent power supply: you’re off, you’re on, and the person you call “me” is the pattern those outages leave behind.
The sly force of “like all children” is its quiet demotion of autobiography. She isn’t claiming a quirky personal oddity; she’s arguing that piecemeal awakening is the human default. Childhood becomes less a golden age than a series of imperfect uploads, each “discovery” provisional, each certainty destined to be revised or erased. That repetition - “discovered... forgot... discovered again” - is the engine. It sounds simple, almost nursery-rhythmic, but the subtext is ruthless: perception is not progress. It’s rehearsal.
Dillard’s intent is also aesthetic. She’s writing against sentimental coming-of-age narratives that pretend growth is linear and cumulative. Her phrasing mimics the actual lived experience of remembering: sudden lucidity, then blankness, then an uncanny return where the world looks both familiar and newly strange. The context, fitting for an author steeped in attentive observation, is a philosophy of noticing. Identity isn’t found once; it’s re-found, over and over, in the act of looking.
The sly force of “like all children” is its quiet demotion of autobiography. She isn’t claiming a quirky personal oddity; she’s arguing that piecemeal awakening is the human default. Childhood becomes less a golden age than a series of imperfect uploads, each “discovery” provisional, each certainty destined to be revised or erased. That repetition - “discovered... forgot... discovered again” - is the engine. It sounds simple, almost nursery-rhythmic, but the subtext is ruthless: perception is not progress. It’s rehearsal.
Dillard’s intent is also aesthetic. She’s writing against sentimental coming-of-age narratives that pretend growth is linear and cumulative. Her phrasing mimics the actual lived experience of remembering: sudden lucidity, then blankness, then an uncanny return where the world looks both familiar and newly strange. The context, fitting for an author steeped in attentive observation, is a philosophy of noticing. Identity isn’t found once; it’s re-found, over and over, in the act of looking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
|---|---|
| Source | An American Childhood — Annie Dillard (1987). Memoir; contains the passage beginning "I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years." |
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