Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackermanis an American poet, essayist, and naturalist known for her wide-ranging curiosity and poetic explorations of the natural world...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 October 1948
CountryUnited States of America
Diane Ackerman quotes about
garden boston house
Because we can't escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.
struggle garden order
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.
garden smell sugar
Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet.
garden thinking mind
[On gardens:] I think they're sanctuaries for the mind and spirit. ... It's easy to feel wonder-struck in a garden, especially if you cultivate delight.
mother hair squids
My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.
home heart home-is-where-the-heart-is
Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.
powerful romantic-love desire
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.
book order ideas
So before I start work on a book, I'm like a pregnant mole - I obsessively tidy and order my closets and everything in my study. Because there's such a cascade of images and ideas that I'm grapping with mentally, I couldn't also be in a chaotic setting.
ghouls safety usual
Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul.
technology hurricanes reminders
Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.
habitat pageant evolve
Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.
growing-up expression mirrors
Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.
passion thug habit
habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.
technology worry grace
I'm certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders.