Quote

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

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Diane Ackerman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 7
Author
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Waukegan
Illinois
Wants
Chairs
Toilet
Animal
Floor
Extending
Sleep
Owners
Bark
Part
Dog
Toilets
Personality
Owner
Hump
Drink
Bowl
Leash
Pure
Wet
Leashes
Joy
Bowls
Tamed

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

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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.
Diane Ackerman
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Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite
Diane Ackerman
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We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
Diane Ackerman
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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
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And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman
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After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm.
Diane Ackerman
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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
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In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds.
Diane Ackerman
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No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman
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... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
Diane Ackerman
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...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
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Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.
Diane Ackerman
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Our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.
Diane Ackerman
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It's animal by animal that you save a species.
Diane Ackerman
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Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.
Diane Ackerman
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Adventure is not something you travel to find. It's something you take with you, or you're not going to find it when you arrive.
Diane Ackerman
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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.
Diane Ackerman
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In the winter, I enjoy cross-country skiing and raising orchids and amaryllises. If I could grow tropical flowers as perennials, I would, especially hibiscus and mandavilla.
Diane Ackerman