"Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair"
About this Quote
Dillard turns the writerly life into a Rube Goldberg machine and then dares you to admit you live inside it. The sentence is a kinetic chain of labor: crank, gears, belt, engine. It’s not inspiration descending like a dove; it’s maintenance, a stubborn, repetitive action that has to happen even when nothing feels “creative.” The hypnotic accumulation of mechanical parts mimics the very grind it describes, yanking you forward with ands the way deadlines and doubt yank a working mind: no pause, no relief, just motion.
The slyest move is the “engine of belief.” Dillard doesn’t pretend the work runs on talent. It runs on a chosen hallucination: that the pages matter, that the next paragraph can be better, that the whole contraption is worth powering. Belief here isn’t a mood; it’s infrastructure. You don’t wait to feel it. You build it by doing the work that supposedly requires it. That inversion is the subtext and the threat: stop cranking and gravity returns.
“Keeps you and your desk in midair” lands like a cartoon image with real adult dread underneath. The desk, emblem of the ordinary and static, becomes something that must be held aloft by continual effort. Contextually, this fits Dillard’s larger project: stripping the romance off art-making without draining it of mystery. She’s spiritual without being sentimental; the miracle isn’t that writing floats, it’s that it ever does - and that your job is to keep it hovering through sheer, repetitive faith.
The slyest move is the “engine of belief.” Dillard doesn’t pretend the work runs on talent. It runs on a chosen hallucination: that the pages matter, that the next paragraph can be better, that the whole contraption is worth powering. Belief here isn’t a mood; it’s infrastructure. You don’t wait to feel it. You build it by doing the work that supposedly requires it. That inversion is the subtext and the threat: stop cranking and gravity returns.
“Keeps you and your desk in midair” lands like a cartoon image with real adult dread underneath. The desk, emblem of the ordinary and static, becomes something that must be held aloft by continual effort. Contextually, this fits Dillard’s larger project: stripping the romance off art-making without draining it of mystery. She’s spiritual without being sentimental; the miracle isn’t that writing floats, it’s that it ever does - and that your job is to keep it hovering through sheer, repetitive faith.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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