Diane Ackerman Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

  Law, Cities, People

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.21, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars.

  Diane Ackerman

  Spiritual, Stars, Love Life

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

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• One can live at a low flame. Most people do. For some, life is an exercise in moderation (best china saved for special occasions), but given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too
  deeply?

  Diane Ackerman

  Exercise, Flames, People

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• One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved.

  Diane Ackerman

  Powerful, Romantic Love, Desire

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.95, Vintage

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• 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.

  Diane Ackerman

  Dream, Children, Blood

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.151, Vintage

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• A kiss is like singing into someone's mouth.

  Diane Ackerman

  Best Love, Kissing, Singing

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• Nature neither gives nor expects mercy.

  Diane Ackerman

  Nature, Giving, Mercy

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.13, Vintage

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

  Diane Ackerman

  Life, Knowing Who You Are, Want

  "On extended wings". Book by Diane Ackerman, 1985.

  22 Copy quote

• Success produces success, just as money produces money.

  Diane Ackerman

  Success, Positive Attitude, Produce

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• What is erotic? The acrobatic play of the imagination. The sea of memories in which we bathe. The way we caress and worship things with our eyes. Our willingness to be stirred by the sight of the voluptuous. What is erotic is our passion for the liveliness of life.

  Diane Ackerman

  Memories, Passion, Eye

  Diane Ackerman (1994). “A Natural History of Love”, Vintage

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• The only and absolute perfect union of two is when a baby hangs suspended in its mother's womb, like a tiny madman in a padded cell, attached to her, feeling her blood and hormones, and moods play through its body, feeling her feelings.

  Diane Ackerman

  Mother, Baby, Cells

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.98, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Our skin is what stands between us and the world.

  Diane Ackerman

  Skins, World

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.68, Vintage

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• If we mammals don't get something to eat every day or two, our temperature drops, all our signs fall off, and we begin to starve. Living at biological red alert, it's not surprising how obsessed we are with food; I'm just amazed we don't pace and fret about it all the time.

  Diane Ackerman

  Fall, Two, Mammals

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales”, p.77, Vintage

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• 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

  Children, Mirrors, Important Relationships

  "The Brain on Love". opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. March 24, 2012.

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• 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

  Memories, Self, Brain

  "The Brain on Love" by Diane Ackerman, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. March 24, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

• Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.

  Diane Ackerman

  Life Changing, People, Soul

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

  Diane Ackerman

  Moving, Lines, Crystals

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Senior, Sweet, Memories

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• As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets.

  Diane Ackerman

  Lost Love, Attachment, People

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.136, Vintage

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• Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move.

  Diane Ackerman

  Moving, Chemicals, Humans

  Diane Ackerman (2004). “An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

  Diane Ackerman

  Flames, Life And Death, Effort

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• 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

  Dog, Sleep, Animal

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.329, Vintage

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• Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.

  Diane Ackerman

  Smell, Mute

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.20, Vintage

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• The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

  Diane Ackerman

  Meaningful, Reality, Tears

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.14, Vintage

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• In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'

  Diane Ackerman

  Chocolate, Lasts, Months

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of the Senses”, p.144, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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