Diane Ackerman Quotes
-
Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.
-
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.
-
For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.
-
Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
-
Horses have made civilization possible.
-
Success produces success, just as money produces money.
-
Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
-
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.
-
Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.
-
Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle – mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of c and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
-
Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.
-
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.
-
History is an agreed-upon fiction.
-
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.
-
Nature neither gives nor expects mercy.
-
Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
-
A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
-
We are defined by how we place our attention.
-
The biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.
-
Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
-
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
-
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.
-
The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.
-
I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.