Quote

habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.

Diane Ackerman

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Diane Ackerman
Age: 75
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Love
Autopilot
Thug
Insidious
Choke
Puts
Particularly
Habit
Smothers
Passion
Chokes

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Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.
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Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.
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Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.
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Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
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Because we can't escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.
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Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
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I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.
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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?
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Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
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A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
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There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.
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There's no place you can go on the prairie that you don't hear the white noise of the wind, steady and rough as surf curling along a non-existant shore.
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
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Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.
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[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit. ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight.
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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.
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It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
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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.
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Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.
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We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
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