Diane Ackerman Quotes
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Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
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I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive.
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We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
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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.
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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.
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When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.
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It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
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The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.
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The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.
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What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.
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For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.
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Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.
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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.
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Success produces success, just as money produces money.
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Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
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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.
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I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory
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Choice is a signature of our species.
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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.
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Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.
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Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.
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A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
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The biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.
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Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?