Quote

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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Diane Ackerman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Wonder
Million
Giant
Thickly
Makes
Summer
Giants
Gland
Soul
Air
Beneath
Lodged
Like
York
Sweat
Glands
City
Visible
Hangs
Cities
Rising
Underground
Millions
Souls
Steam
Exhalations
Days
Eight
Combined
Vents

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Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
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For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.
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The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
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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.
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Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.
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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.
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Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.
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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.
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
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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.
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It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.
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Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have.
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Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.
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Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best. ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work. ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence.
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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.
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As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.
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Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.
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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.
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In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'
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Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.
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