Diane Ackerman Quotes

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

Diane Ackerman

• World
• Attention
• Magic

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Quotes to Explore

• Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

  

  Kara DioGuardi
  • Great
  • Learn
  • Listen

• Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

  

  Quintilian
  • Food
  • Change
  • Like

• It's good to be busy on a film set because there is a lot of sitting around, so if you've got two roles to play at one time, then that's great to do.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • Time
  • Good
  • Great

• There are people who are very resourceful, at being remorseful, and who apparently feel that the best way to make friends is to do something terrible and then make amends.

  

  Ogden Nash
  • People
  • Friends
  • Best

• My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

  

  Natalie Babbitt
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Husband

• I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

  

  Garrison Keillor
  • Believe
  • Reality
  • Eye

• For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God.

  

  Lactantius
  • God
  • Power
  • Perfect

• I am attracted by almost any French word - written or spoken. Before I knew its meaning, I thought 'saucisson' so exquisite that it seemed the perfect name to give a child - until I learned it meant 'sausage!'

  

  Olivia De Havilland
  • Perfect
  • Thought
  • Child

• I've never really identified with the way a typical alpha male views women. It's always an awkward forum for me to hang out with another guy and talk about girls, because I can't really find a way to fit in.

  

  Jack Antonoff Fun.
  • Women
  • Guy
  • Me

• Tahir Pasha assigned me a room when I was staying in his residence, and every night before sleeping, I would spend around three hours going over the books I had memorized. It would take me three months to go through the lot. Thanks be to God, all those works became steps ascending to the truths of the Qur'an.

  

  Said Nursi
  • God
  • Night
  • Thanks

• A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

  

  Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Man
  • Fight
  • Rights

• You know those award shows. The cliche is that it's an honor just to be nominated, but that happens to be true. Whoever wins it in the end, I don't know, sometimes it feels arbitrary. Sometimes it feels like it's deserving.

  

  Hank Azaria
  • True
  • End
  • Honor

• I can't deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • You
  • Relationship
  • Space

• Despite the often illusory nature of essays on the psychology of a nation, it seems to me there is something revealing in the insistence with which a people will question itself during certain periods of its growth.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • People
  • Nature
  • Question

• I'm old-school English, so I suppose I'm quite protective - especially of time. Now that I'm a father, every moment is precious.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Time
  • School
  • Father

• I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

  

  Anne Stevenson
  • Book
  • Marriage
  • Poetry

• 'Muppets' is incredibly analog, 'Alice' is very digital.

  

  James Bobin

• I have all the patience in the world about Sirens. For me it's not a Grateful Dead project, it's a Me project.

  

  Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead
  • World
  • Patience

• If you want to write, you have to be willing to be disturbed.

  

  Kate Green
  • Writing
  • Want
  • Disturbed

• So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

  

  Bill Watterson
  • World
  • Real
  • Food

• The gaming world is a complete mystery to me! Well, I did play Pac Man and Frogger using big machines at an arcade back in the '80s.

  

  Doug Jones
  • World

• Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.

  

  Bronislaw Malinowski
  • Magic
  • Victory
  • Anxiety

• There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.

  

  Robert W. Service
  • World
  • Men
  • Heart

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

  

  Diane Ackerman
  • World
  • Attention
  • Magic