Quotes by Diane Ackerman

About Diane Ackerman:

Diane Ackerman is an American poet, essayist, and naturalist known for her wide-ranging curiosity and poetic explorations of the natural world.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own.

Diane Ackerman

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

I like knowing that the further back one traces any lineage, the narrower the path grows, to the haunt of just a few shaggy ancestors, with luck on their side, little gizmos in their cells and a future storied with impulses and choices that will ulti...

Diane Ackerman

We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.

Diane Ackerman

Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.

Diane Ackerman

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Diane Ackerman

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

Diane Ackerman

What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity.

Diane Ackerman

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.

Diane Ackerman

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

Diane Ackerman

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Diane Ackerman

We live on the leash of our senses.

Diane Ackerman

On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million souls. Steam rising from vents underground makes you wonder if there isn't one giant sweat gland lodged beneath the city.

Diane Ackerman

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read.

Diane Ackerman

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Diane Ackerman

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

My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.

Diane Ackerman

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, ba...

Diane Ackerman

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.

Diane Ackerman

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

Author Bio

  • NameDiane Ackerman
  • DescriptionAuthor, poet, naturalist
  • BornOctober 7, 1948
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship