Quote

For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.

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
Thoughtlessly
Something
Never

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
Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.
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
Wonder is a bulky emotion. When you let it fill your heart and mind, there isn't room for anxiety, distress or anything else.
Diane Ackerman
Image
I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.
Diane Ackerman
Image
As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Nature neither gives nor expects mercy.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.
Diane Ackerman
Image
Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?
Diane Ackerman
Image
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?
Diane Ackerman
Image
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
Diane Ackerman
Image
In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.
Diane Ackerman
Image
People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade cushions, and the sun never sets.
Diane Ackerman
Image
We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
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
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
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
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