30 Diane Ackerman Quotes for You to Enjoy

Diane Ackerman

American Poet

Born: Oct 7, 1948

Animals Living Nature Own Time Will

Related authors: Edgar Allan Poe Emily Dickinson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Maya Angelou Ralph Waldo Emerson Robert Frost T. S. Eliot Walt Whitman

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. Diane Ackerman

Nature Scent Smell Mountains Nothing Summer Beside Memorable More Up Than Unexpected Childhood Lake Fleeting Conjure Momentary

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

Love Best Love Is School Homework High Tuition Painful

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. Diane Ackerman

Memories Change Emotions Important Relationships Intimate Delicate Shape Self Fail Most Altering Ultimate Brain Souvenir Us Foster Bonds

The simple, stupefying truth that, as a woman, I am a minute ocean, in the dark tropic of whose womb eggs lay coded as roe, floating in the sea that wet-nursed us all, moved me deeply. Diane Ackerman

Truth Me Woman Dark Simple Ocean Minute Lay Am Womb Roe Eggs Moved Us Sea Floating Whose Deeply

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones. Diane Ackerman

People Better Will Animals Big Few Holding Tree Wild Worse Giant See Come Like Know Most How Pine Bamboo Up Exotic Canadian China Sea Downhill Ever Bellies Zoo

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

Life Own My Own Passenger Want

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read. Diane Ackerman

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

Nature Corrections More Never-Ending Like Crystal Line Than Moves Bold

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. Diane Ackerman

Together Lie Emotions Language Moods Poem Only Records Beyond Normal

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them. Diane Ackerman

Garden Mind Too Complex Complexity Embrace Finds Small Both Struggles Vast Excites Spot Rewards Order Orders Them Including

Success produces success, just as money produces money. Diane Ackerman

Success Money Just Produces

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

Love Love Is Wonderful Everyone Admit No-One Just Agree Necessary

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

You Face Mirror Secret Gaze Look Reveals Pins Double

Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool. Diane Ackerman

Weather Fall Field Jazz Add Someone Sharpening Hound Call Sound Scissors Yield Stomach Again Warm Cool Thermometer Muscles

Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they're the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim. Diane Ackerman

Trust Living Claim Seeing Without Hear Tiny Them Even Season

On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million souls. Steam rising from vents underground makes you wonder if there isn't one giant sweat gland lodged beneath the city. Diane Ackerman

You Beneath Air Summer Visible Giant Lodged City Some Rising Steam Gland Combined New Days Like Underground Makes Souls Wonder York New York New York City Eight Sweat Million

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature. Diane Ackerman

Alone Nature Balance Will Own Human Nature Spell Our Distance Further Ourselves Protect Understand Precarious Human Senses Explored Harder Present

I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders. Diane Ackerman

Daily Technology Digital Enjoy Virtual Digital Technology Our Worry Ways About Rely Blinders Opposed Graces Certainly Many Whose

Like many animals, wild ponies can sense a drop in barometric pressure. When a storm threatens, they know to seek shelter in hilly areas and huddle together with their rumps facing the oncoming wind. Diane Ackerman

Together Pressure Wind Animals Drop Sense Wild Threatens Seek Area Facing Like Know Shelter Storm Many

Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can't show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn't matter whose body is whose. Diane Ackerman

Alone Mother Matter Fusion Neither Self Between Feels Brain Brains Child Which Body Show Internal Whose Bond Belongs

Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time. Diane Ackerman

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. Diane Ackerman

Winter Enjoy Would Tropical Could If I Could Skiing Grow Flowers Raising

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