Diane Ackerman quotes

Diane Ackerman is an American poet, essayist, and naturalist known for her wide-ranging works about nature and science. Her books, such as "A Natural History of the Senses," blend scientific insight with poetic language. She explores the wonders of the natural world and our emotional connections to it. Here are 74 of her quotes:

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

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

Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.

Diane Ackerman

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

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

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

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

Diane Ackerman

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?

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

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret: You are looking into a predator's eyes. Most predators have eyes set right on the front of their heads, so they can use binocular vision to sight and track their prey.

Diane Ackerman

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

Diane Ackerman

Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.

Diane Ackerman

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.

Diane Ackerman

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

Diane Ackerman

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

Diane Ackerman

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

Diane Ackerman

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

Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.

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, balled up like giant pine cones.

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

Success produces success, just as money produces money.

Diane Ackerman