Diane Ackerman Quotes

Above all, we ask the poet to teach us a way of seeing.

Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.

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

In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'

Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.

It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.

The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters.

Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.

poetry had everything to teach me about life.

Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks.

After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm.

Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet.

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.

Who you are isn't tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.

Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative.

Love, like truth, is the unassailable defense.

... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.

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?

We live on the leash of our senses.

The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.

What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.

Like love, travel makes you innocent again.

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.

Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.

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.

Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved.

We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. ... they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception.

If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.

As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.

Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.

I'm fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will risk their lives to perform acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion for total strangers.

Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways.

There is a way of beholding nature which is a form of prayer, a way of minding something with such clarity and aliveness that the rest of the world recedes. It . . . gives the brain a small vacation.

History is an agreed-upon fiction.

Our skin is what stands between us and the world.

Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.

Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.

The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.

The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.

What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine.

Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.

Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.

One of the things I like best about animals in the wild is that they're always off on some errand. They have appointments to keep. It's only we humans who wonder what we're here for.

hope and uncertainty [are] the twin ingredients necessary for romance to thrive. ... Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope, or fails as often, as love.