Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

The quote plays on the double meaning of “spend”: to use up time and to expend money. By treating an “afternoon” like currency, Dillard underscores that time is the one resource everyone inevitably exhausts, and it cannot be hoarded or carried forward. The second sentence echoes the familiar admonition that material possessions cannot be taken beyond death, but Dillard redirects it toward time itself: you also cannot “take” unused hours into the future. The imperative “Spend” becomes an ethical prompt—stop deferring life, invest attention and energy now, and accept that the value of an afternoon lies in how fully it is lived.