Diane Ackerman Quotes & Sayings

Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful. — Diane Ackerman

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity. — Diane Ackerman

Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can't show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn't matter whose body is whose. — Diane Ackerman

Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories. — Diane Ackerman

Habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot. — Diane Ackerman

I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it. — Diane Ackerman

Poetry had everything to teach me about life. — Diane Ackerman

If there are words for all the pastels in a hue - the lavenders, mauves, fushsias, plums, and lilacs - who will name the tones and tints of a smell? It's as if we were hypnotized en masse and told to selectively forget. It may be, too, that smells move us so profoundly, in part, because we cannot utter their names. In a world sayable and lush, where marvels offer themselves up readily for verbal dissection, smells are often right on the tip of our tongues - but no closer - and it gives them a kind of magical distance, a mystery, a power without a name, a sacredness. — Diane Ackerman

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I'm stricken
by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain
everythingness of everything, in cahoots
with the everythingness of everything else.
- From Diffraction (for Carl Sagan) — Diane Ackerman

Must be I find you
tough and lusty as the life,
all toil and tempo,
finesse and plain fight,
with values so old they startle me.
Must be I think of you
as I do the rugged flowers
that prove themselves over and over in the spring,
that elsewhere might perish,
but here master the earth,
bloom into gangly lives of high color,
and inhale the sun, knowing the land
better than the land does.
Hardy, savvy,
they will outlive us all. — Diane Ackerman

We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative. Imaginative people fidget with ideas, including the idea of a relationship. If they're wordsmiths like us, they fidget a lot in words. — Diane Ackerman

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read. — Diane Ackerman

The Germans have removed, murdered or burned alive tens of thousands of Jews. Out of the three million Polsih Jews, no more than 10 percent remain. — Diane Ackerman

Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another. — Diane Ackerman

God may promise not to destroy creation, but it is not a promise humankind made - to our peril. — Diane Ackerman

Below us somewhere in the gelatinous phantasmagoria of churning blue, the whales wouldn't be much aware of the storm. — Diane Ackerman

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. — Diane Ackerman

So couples relive romantic memories, families watch home movies, and friends "catch up" with each other, as if they've lagged behind on a trail. Sifting memory for saliences to report, they reveal how vital pieces of their identity have changed. Aging, we tailor memories to fit our evolving silhouette, and as life's vocabulary changes, memories change to fathom the new order. Lose your memory, and you may drift in an alien world. — Diane Ackerman

Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed. — Diane Ackerman

When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards. — Diane Ackerman

An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl. — Diane Ackerman

In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations. — Diane Ackerman

Despite not knowing if what he felt from moment to moment would pass or last forever, he entered fully into his shifting states of violent rage, self-pity, longing, heartbreak, cynicism, without losing the ability to think about what was happening to him. That took courage, I thought, living with the suffering in a mindful way, as an artifact of being, neither good nor bad. — Diane Ackerman

Love is the great intangible ... Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate
love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again ... Love is the white light of emotion ... Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is. — Diane Ackerman

What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity. — Diane Ackerman

The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism. — Diane Ackerman

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention — Diane Ackerman

One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved. — Diane Ackerman

He'd know about the role of mirror neurons in the brain, special cells in the premotor cortex that fire right before a person reaches for a rock, steps forward, turns away, begins to smile.Amazingly, the same neurons fire whether we do something or watch someone else do the same thing, and both summon similar feelings. Learning form our own mishaps isn't as safe as learning from someone else's, which helps us decipher the world of intentions, making our social whirl possible. The brain evolved clever ways to spy or eavesdrop on risk, to fathom another's joy or pain quickly, as detailed sensations, without resorting to words. We feel what we see, we experience others as self. — Diane Ackerman

The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest. — Diane Ackerman

Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive. — Diane Ackerman

In the rain forest, no niche lies unused. No emptiness goes unfilled. No gasp of sunlight goes untrapped. In a million vest pockets, a million life-forms quietly tick. No other place on earth feels so lush. Sometimes we picture it as an echo of the original Garden of Eden - a realm ancient, serene, and fertile, where pythons slither and jaguars lope. But it is mainly a world of cunning and savage trees. Truant plants will not survive. The meek inherit nothing. Light is a thick yellow vitamin they would kill for, and they do. One of the first truths one learns in the rain forest is that there is nothing fainthearted or wimpy about plants. — Diane Ackerman

Like tiny islands on the horizon, they can vanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather, their coral gradually erodes, pickled by salt and heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life. Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees. Others crawl with pirates and reptiles. Together they connect a self with the mainland and society. Plot their trail and a mercurial past becomes visible.

Memories feel geological in their repose, solid and true, the bedrock of consciousness. — Diane Ackerman

We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars,
watching Cassiopeia mount her throne
and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South.
I would say, "I have a secret to tell you."
And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly,
you would answer: "Whisper it into my mouth.
— Diane Ackerman

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones. — Diane Ackerman

[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight. — Diane Ackerman

The Underground Peasant Movement adopted the slogan of "As little, as late, and as bad as possible," and set about sabotaging deliveries — Diane Ackerman

If organs as elemental as brain and heart can be persuaded to regenerate, and others, like ears and corneas, can be fashioned from living ink, how will that change us as a species? Will the printing of organs affect our evolution? Could it alter our genes? — Diane Ackerman

I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
I will honor all life
- wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell - on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars. — Diane Ackerman

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world. — Diane Ackerman

Choice is a signature of our species. — Diane Ackerman

Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else. — Diane Ackerman

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae. — Diane Ackerman

Marek Edelman in Krall, Shielding the Flame. After the war Edelman became a cardiologist, commenting that "when one knows death so well, one has more responsibility for life." Chapter — Diane Ackerman

In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?' — Diane Ackerman

Love, like truth, is the unassailable defense. — Diane Ackerman

Working from home meant we could vary snack and coffee breaks, change our desks or view, goof off, drink on the job, even spend the day in pajamas, and often meet to gossip or share ideas. On the other hand, we bossed ourselves around, set impossible goals, and demanded longer hours than office jobs usually entail. It was the ultimate "flextime," in that it depended on how flexible we felt each day, given deadlines, distractions, and workaholic crescendos. — Diane Ackerman

one legend has it that Jews found Poland attractive because the country's name sounded like the Hebrew imperative po lin ("rest here"). — Diane Ackerman

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas. — Diane Ackerman

So often loneliness comes from being out of touch with parts of oneself. We go searching for those parts in other people, but there's a difference between feeling separate from others and separate from oneself. — Diane Ackerman

Like love, travel makes you innocent again. — Diane Ackerman

I do feel responsible. He used to be able to look after himself. Now he can't. That's so different, so strange. The big question is: Is more improvement really possible, or should I stop pushing him?' [p. 153] — Diane Ackerman

The simple, stupefying truth that, as a woman, I am a minute ocean, in the dark tropic of whose womb eggs lay coded as roe, floating in the sea that wet-nursed us all, moved me deeply. — Diane Ackerman

If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again. — Diane Ackerman

I think if you look at any facet of nature in enough detail, you find it fascinating. How could you not? The universe is so full of marvels. Here's an example
rain, the shape of rain. I was minding my own business, working on my book, looking out the window, and it was raining and I was noticing that the raindrops were falling in that classic round-looking way, and I thought, 'I wonder if raindrops really are round?' So I started researching it a little, and I discovered that raindrops change shape 300 times a second. — Diane Ackerman

We carry the ocean within us; our veins mirror the tides. — Diane Ackerman

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier? — Diane Ackerman

What sort of stewards of the future planet will today's digital children be? — Diane Ackerman

Music, the perfume of hearing, probably began as a religious act, to arouse groups of people. — Diane Ackerman

Before annihilation comes an exile from Nature, and then only through wonder and transcendence, the Ghetto rabbi taught, may one combat the psychic disintegration of everyday life. — Diane Ackerman

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives. — Diane Ackerman

I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders. — Diane Ackerman

There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins. — Diane Ackerman

I like knowing that the further back one traces any lineage, the narrower the path grows, to the haunt of just a few shaggy ancestors, with luck on their side, little gizmos in their cells and a future storied with impulses and choices that will ultimately define them. — Diane Ackerman

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ... We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves. — Diane Ackerman

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret. — Diane Ackerman

When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion. — Diane Ackerman

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is. — Diane Ackerman

The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters. — Diane Ackerman

Germany's crime is the greatest crime the world has ever known, because it is not on the scale of History: it is on the scale of Evolution. — Diane Ackerman

< ... > [Rainer Maria Rilke] speaks of absorbing Earth's phenomena with the full frenzy of human relish and insight as our destiny: It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again ... We are the bees of the invisible ... [Our work is] the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature. — Diane Ackerman

I may enter a zone of transcendence, in which I marvel at all the accidents of fate, since the beginning of life on earth, that led to my genes being created and my standing in this particular garden in a contemplative and imagining mind. I've been reading recently how reflection evolved. what a fascinating solution to the rigors of survival ... how amazing that a few basic ingredients- the same ones that form the mountains, plants, and rivers- when arranged differently and stressed could result in us.
More and more of late, I find myself standing outside of life, with a sense of the human saga laid out before me. it is a private vision, balanced between youth and old age, a vision in which I understand how caught up in striving we humans get, and a little of why, and how difficult it is even to recognize, since it feels integral to our nature and is. but I find it interesting that, according to many religions, life and begins and ends in a garden. — Diane Ackerman

She had a very traditional Catholic upbringing and that didn't deter her. On the contrary it strengthened her determination to be true to herself, to follow her heart, even though it meant enduring a lot of self-sacrifice." Intrigued — Diane Ackerman

Rescuers tended to be decisive, fast-thinking, risk-taking, independent, adventurous, openhearted, rebellious, and unusually flexible - able to switch plans, abandon habits, or change ingrained routines at a moment's notice. They tended to be nonconformists, and though many rescuers held solemn principles worth dying for, they didn't regard themselves as heroic. — Diane Ackerman

We live on the leash of our senses. — Diane Ackerman

Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next. — Diane Ackerman

I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars. — Diane Ackerman

Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers] ... For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood. — Diane Ackerman

We are defined by how we place our attention. — Diane Ackerman

Love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny. — Diane Ackerman

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings. — Diane Ackerman

It's animal by animal that you save a species. — Diane Ackerman

Five weeks in the hospital fled as if down a sinkhole into the middle of the earth ... Can waiting by definition slow, flash by? ... Time becomes even more elastic than usual
minutes can stretch for ages and days suddenly snap together. [p. 97] — Diane Ackerman

I've always loved scuba diving and the cell-tickling feel of being underwater, though it poses unique frustrations. Alone, but with others, you may share the same sights and feelings, but you can't communicate well. — Diane Ackerman

What remained would gradually acquire its own shape and dimension, but many of our favorite things, my favorite ways of being a couple, had vanished and it was no use pretending, hoping, wishing that he would return to his old self, and me to mine. [p. 156] — Diane Ackerman

We're dabbling in eugenics all the time, breeding ideal crops to replace less aesthetic or nutritious or hardy varieties; leveling forests to graze cattle or erect shopping malls and condos; planting groves of a few familiar trees that homeowners and industries prefer. — Diane Ackerman

Selves will accumulate when one isn't looking, and they don't always act wisely or well. — Diane Ackerman

Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks. — Diane Ackerman

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way. — Diane Ackerman

I was moving in a narrow range between busy distractedness and a pervasive sadness whose granules seemed to enter each cell, weighing it down ... I ghosted between islands of anxiety ... a fatigue that dulled my zest, decanted it. Sorrow felt like a marble coat I couldn't shed. — Diane Ackerman

Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence. — Diane Ackerman

Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite. — Diane Ackerman

Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite — Diane Ackerman

We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it's against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don't talk about them, or we don't talk about them as much. — Diane Ackerman

I am a great fan of the universe, which I take literally: as one. All of it interests me, and it interests me in detail. — Diane Ackerman

Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history. — Diane Ackerman

We have vexed and bothered every plant and every animal on every continent. — Diane Ackerman

Sometimes with a flutter of agitated worry that felt like a beetle was trapped inside my ribs. p. 90 — Diane Ackerman

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling. — Diane Ackerman

It's not enough to do research from a distance. It's by living beside animals that you learn their behavior and psychology. On — Diane Ackerman