Diane Ackerman Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Diane Ackerman on Wise Famous Quotes.
In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'
Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.
The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.
Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.
Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.
Suffering took hold of me like a magic spell abolishing all differences between friends and strangers.
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
The Underground Peasant Movement adopted the slogan of "As little, as late, and as bad as possible," and set about sabotaging deliveries
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.
Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.
We humans are obsessed with lights ... Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.
Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.
Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways.
What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.
Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, Polish Customs, Traditions, and Folklore (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1996), p. 259. people
Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.
Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul.
In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds.
All our senses feed the brain, and if it diets mainly on cruelty and suffering, how can it remain healthy?
Today, instead of adapting to the natural world in which we live, we've created a human environment in which we've embedded the natural world.
Without memories we wouldn't know who we are, how we once were, who we'd like to be in the memorable future. We are the sum of our memories.
Love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite
one legend has it that Jews found Poland attractive because the country's name sounded like the Hebrew imperative po lin ("rest here").
I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.
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.
We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine.
Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.
Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.
We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.
Adventure is not something you travel to find. It's something you take with you, or you're not going to find it when you arrive.