Diane Ackerman Quotes
Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.
Quotes to Explore
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With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
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I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.
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I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
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In the past, TSR and now Wizards of the Coast have asked me to do game stats for my characters, and I'm never comfortable doing that. It's all relative after all.
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The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.
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Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.
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The Scottish Highlands are incredible. There seems to be magic and poetry everywhere.
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Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
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Being able to compete for consumers' attention and dollars over the preciousness of access is a thing of the past. Everyone is using the Internet to globally market a product.
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The West has demonstrated its ability in the past to project power and move troops to distant regions.
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Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.
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The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.
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My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.
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I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.
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No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job....Poetry..remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.
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The prophets... interpreted past history, shaped present history, and foretold future history on the basis of the conviction that God rules with righteousness in the affairs of nations, and that only what is just, and not what is expedient and profitable, shall endure.
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From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and saga of the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?
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Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
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Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no indsturial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past.
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The entire process seems simple and natural, i.e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism.
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I don't have a problem showing my legs!
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We make our public servants jump through quite a few hoops, you know. We get hysterical if they accept a $50 lunch from a lobbyist. We get hysterical if they accept a ride on some corporate jet.
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I just happen to love fighting and happen to be great at it. And I let my lifestyle carry over into my chosen profession.
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Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.
