Diane Ackerman Quotes

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

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...

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.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

Fear is danger to your body, but disgust is danger to your soul.

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.

American writer 1803-1882 Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.

Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.

I am a great fan of the universe, which I take literally: as one. All of it interests me, and it interests me in detail.

Give a man enough rope and he'll wrap himself around your little finger.

In the winter, I enjoy cross-country skiing and raising orchids and amaryllises. If I could grow tropical flowers as perennials, I would, especially hibiscus and mandavilla.

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.

Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.

[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.

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention

Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.

For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative - I just thought I was strange.

habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.

Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn't fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive.

Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

Success produces success, just as money produces money.

Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.

People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade cushions, and the sun never sets.

To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.

As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity.

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touched starved. Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

Nature neither gives nor expects mercy.

Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.

Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.

We are defined by how we place our attention.

When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.

Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.

A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.