Quote

Culture is what people invent when they have lost nature.

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
Invent
Culture
Lost
Nature
People

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire?permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
Image
Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have.
Diane Ackerman
Image
The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.
Diane Ackerman
Image
If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, urea, and electricity, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grand and lesser mayhems of the heart ?
Diane Ackerman
Image
The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
Diane Ackerman
Image
The only and absolute perfect union of two is when a baby hangs suspended in its mother's womb, like a tiny madman in a padded cell, attached to her, feeling her blood and hormones, and moods play through its body, feeling her feelings.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.
Diane Ackerman
Image
After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm.
Diane Ackerman
Image
No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
Image
Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.
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
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