Diane Ackerman Quotes
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Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
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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.
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Choice is a signature of our species.
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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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A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
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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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We are defined by how we place our attention.
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Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
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I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory
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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.
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I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
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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.
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Success produces success, just as money produces money.
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Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.
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I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.
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Because we can't escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.
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What is erotic? The acrobatic play of the imagination. The sea of memories in which we bathe. The way we caress and worship things with our eyes. Our willingness to be stirred by the sight of the voluptuous. What is erotic is our passion for the liveliness of life.
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Horses have made civilization possible.
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The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.
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The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.
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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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The biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.
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Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.
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It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.