quotes by Diane Ackerman

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."
— Diane Ackerman

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

"There's no place you can go on the prairie that you don't hear the white noise of the wind, steady and rough as surf curling along a non-existant shore."
— Diane Ackerman

"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 walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world."
— Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses)

"Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world."
— Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses)

"When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart. "
— Diane Ackerman

"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."
— Diane Ackerman

"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."
— Diane Ackerman

"...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom."
— Diane Ackerman

"I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life."
— Diane Ackerman

"The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest."
— Diane Ackerman

"We would lie on coral sand, below sugary stars,
watching Cassiopeia mount her throne
and the Great Bear wash its paws in the South.
I would say, "I have a secret to tell you."
And, folding me in your arms, boyish and sly,
you would answer: "Whisper it into my mouth.

"
— Diane Ackerman (Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems)

"Must be I find you
tough and lusty as the life,
all toil and tempo,
finesse and plain fight,
with values so old they startle me.
Must be I think of you
as I do the rugged flowers
that prove themselves over and over in the spring,
that elsewhere might perish,
but here master the earth,
bloom into gangly lives of high color,
and inhale the sun, knowing the land
better than the land does.
Hardy, savvy,
they will outlive us all."
— Diane Ackerman

"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."
— Diane Ackerman (The Moon by Whale Light and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians and Whales)

""Love seems to be as Essential as Sunlight""
— Diane Ackerman

"One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds.

Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day.

Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all."
— Diane Ackerman (I Praise My Destroyer: Poems)

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

"Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic."
— Diane Ackerman (Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden)

"In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations."
— Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses)

"Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people."
— Diane Ackerman

"...as zookeepers, the Zabinskis understood both vigilance and predators; in a swamp of vipers, one planned every footstep. Shaped by the gravity of wartime, it wasn't always clear who or what could be considered outside or inside, loyal or turncoat, predator or prey."
— Diane Ackerman

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

""I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well"
"
— Diane Ackerman

"Below us somewhere in the gelatinous phantasmagoria of churning blue, the whales wouldn't be much aware of the storm."
— Diane Ackerman

"Alligators have beautiful undulating skin, which feels dense, spongy, solid, like the best eraser."
— Diane Ackerman (The Moon by Whale Light and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians and Whales)

"The idea of safety had shrunk into particles - one snug moment, then the next. Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heightens the senses. Trusting one's hunches only seems gamble if one has time for seem; otherwise the brain goes on autopilot and trades the elite craft of analysis for the best rapid insights that float up from its danger files and ancient bag of tricks."
— Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story)

"At some point, one asks, "Toward what end is my life lived?" A great freedom comes from being able to answer that question. A sleeper can be decoyed out of bed by the sheer beauty of dawn on the open seas. Part of my job, as I see it, is to allow that to happen. Sleepers like me need at some point to rise and take their turn on morning watch for the sake of the planet, but also for their own sake, for the enrichment of their lives. From the deserts of Namibia to the razor-backed Himalayas, there are wonderful creatures that have roamed the Earth much longer than we, creatures that not only are worthy of our respect but could teach us about ourselves."
— Diane Ackerman (The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds)

"...he'd know about the role of mirror neurons in the brain, special cells in the premotor cortex that fire right before a person reaches for a rock, steps forward, turns away, begins to smile.Amazingly, the same neurons fire whether we do something or watch someone else do the same thing, and both summon similar feelings. Learning form our own mishaps isn't as safe as learning from someone else's, which helps us decipher the world of intentions, making our social whirl possible. The brain evolved clever ways to spy or eavesdrop on risk, to fathom another's joy or pain quickly, as detailed sensations, without resorting to words. We feel what we see, we experience others as self."
— Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story)