Quote

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.

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
Wreck
Wrecks
Sanity
Told
Knowing
Mind
Vapor

More quotes by Diane Ackerman

Image
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
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
A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Nature neither gives nor expects mercy.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Flight is nothing but an attitude in motion.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
Diane Ackerman
Image
... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
Diane Ackerman
Image
As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
We live on the leash of our senses.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.
Diane Ackerman
Image
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
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