An Alchemy of Mind Quotes

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Metaphor isn't just decorative language. If it were, it wouldn't scare us so much. . . . Colorful language threatens some people, who associate it, I think, with a kind of eroticism (playing with language in public = playing with yourself), and with extra expense (having to sense or feel more). I don't share that opinion. Why reduce life to a monotone? Is that truer to the experience of being alive? I don't think so. It robs us of life's many textures. Language provides an abundance of words to keep us company on our travels. But we're losing words at a reckless pace, the national vocabulary is shrinking. Most Americans use only several hundred words or so. Frugality has its place, but not in the larder of language. We rely on words to help us detail how we feel, what we once felt, what we can feel. When the blood drains out of language, one's experience of life weakens and grows pale. It's not simply a dumbing down, but a numbing.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“We tend to think of memories as monuments we once forged and may find intact beneath the weedy growth of years. But, in a real sense, memories are tied to and describe the present. Formed in an idiosyncratic way when they happened, they're also true to the moment of recall, including how you feel, all you've experienced, and new values, passions, and vulnerability. One never steps into the same stream of consciousness twice.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“One job of the unconscious is to act as a workshop for rough-shaping ideas; crafting notions as new parts or tools become available; storing observations until something relevant appears in the landscape -- generally soaking, simmering, and incubating ideas. Gradually, while combing through its inventory, it finds bits and pieces that create a pattern. When it slips knowledge of that pattern to the conscious mind, it's a surprise, like a telegram slid under the door.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Studies show that the IQ range of most creative people is surprisingly narrow, around 120 to 130. Higher IQs can perform certain kinds of tasks better--logic, feats of memory, and so on. But if the IQ is much higher or lower than that, the window of creativity closes. Nonetheless, for some reason we believe more is better, so people yearn for tip-top IQs, and that calls for bigger memories. A fast, retentive memory is handy, but no skeleton key for survival.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. But I also sense the universe is magical, greater than the sum of its parts, which I don't attribute to a governing god, but simply to the surprising, ecstatic, frightening everyday reality we all know. Ultimately, I find consciousness a fascinating predicament for matter to get into.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“<...> [Rainer Maria Rilke] speaks of absorbing Earth's phenomena with the full frenzy of human relish and insight as our destiny: "It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again... We are the bees of the invisible... [Our work is] the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Each photograph is a magic lamp rubbed by the mind.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Without memories we wouldn't know who we are, how we once were, who we'd like to be in the memorable future. We are the sum of our memories.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Like tiny islands on the horizon, they can vanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather, their coral gradually erodes, pickled by salt and heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life. Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees. Others crawl with pirates and reptiles. Together they connect a self with the mainland and society. Plot their trail and a mercurial past becomes visible.

Memories feel geological in their repose, solid and true, the bedrock of consciousness.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“So couples relive romantic memories, families watch home movies, and friends "catch up" with each other, as if they've lagged behind on a trail. Sifting memory for saliences to report, they reveal how vital pieces of their identity have changed. Aging, we tailor memories to fit our evolving silhouette, and as life's vocabulary changes, memories change to fathom the new order. Lose your memory, and you may drift in an alien world.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain