Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

Image
...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
Image
After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
Diane Ackerman
Image
The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.
Diane Ackerman
Image
I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
Diane Ackerman
Image
For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.
Diane Ackerman
Image
And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. In time, a pair invents its own commonwealth, complete with anthems, rituals, and lingos-a cult of two with fallible gods.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite
Diane Ackerman
Image
We humans are obsessed with lights...Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
Image
Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
Diane Ackerman
Image
An animal on a leash is not tamed by the owner. The owner is extending himself through the leash to that part of his personality which is pure dog, that part of him which just wants to eat, sleep, bark, hump chairs, wet the floor in joy, and drink out of a toilet bowl.
Diane Ackerman