352 Quotes by Diane Ackerman

Choice is a signature of our species.

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.

Like many animals, wild ponies can sense a drop in barometric pressure. When a storm threatens, they know to seek shelter in hilly areas and huddle together with their rumps facing the oncoming wind.

Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?

The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism.

Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.

We embrace two-legged beings, and can warm to four-legged beings, too, but for most people, six legs is pushing it. Most don't need multi-eyed, antennaed face time.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.