Diane Ackerman Quotes
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Horses have made civilization possible.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.
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Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
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Success produces success, just as money produces money.
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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 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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Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
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We are defined by how we place our attention.
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A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
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Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
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The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.
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The biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.
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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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History is an agreed-upon fiction.
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I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.
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An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire?permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way.