Quote

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.

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
Always
Appointments
Things
Wild
Like
Animals
Animal
Wonder
Keep
Best
Errand
Humans
Errands

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History is an agreed-upon fiction.
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Choice is a signature of our species.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.
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Humans are the most successful invasives of all time.
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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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Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
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Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.
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... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
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We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
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Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have.
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Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.
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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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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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