Diane Ackerman Quotes
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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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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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Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.
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I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.
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We are defined by how we place our attention.
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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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Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
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I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory
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Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.
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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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All relationships change the brain - but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.
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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.
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Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite.
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History is an agreed-upon fiction.
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For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?
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Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
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The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
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There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.
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There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
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Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.
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As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.
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Above all, we ask the poet to teach us a way of seeing.
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One can live at a low flame. Most people do. For some, life is an exercise in moderation (best china saved for special occasions), but given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too