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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.

Diane Ackerman

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Diane Ackerman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Small
Manner
Plagues
Age
Wars
Disasters
Natural
Survive
Genetic
War
Disaster
Ingenuity
Sometimes
Somehow
Plague
World
Species
Survived
Large
Ice
Wonder
Ages
Bottlenecks

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

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I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don't think I'm very good at it.
Diane Ackerman
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Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.
Diane Ackerman
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Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
Diane Ackerman
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It's animal by animal that you save a species.
Diane Ackerman
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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
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habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.
Diane Ackerman
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As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships.
Diane Ackerman
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
Diane Ackerman
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The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.
Diane Ackerman
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Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
Diane Ackerman
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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
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Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman
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Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
Diane Ackerman
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When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call white is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman
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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
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Adventure is not something you travel to find. It's something you take with you, or you're not going to find it when you arrive.
Diane Ackerman
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No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman