Quotes by Diane Ackerman

As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.

Much more. Were joined at the heart.Bad luck for you, Im afraid. My tickers pretty wonky.Too much boozing.His eyes twinkled, and he drew me close. Not enough kissling.

The faint pink coating the treetops promised rippling buds, a sure sign of spring hastening in, right on schedule, and the animal world getting ready for its fiesta of courting and mating, dueling and dancing, suckling and grubbing, costume-making and shedding-in short, the fuzzy, fizzy hoopla of lifes ramshackle return.

The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won’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.

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m strickenby the ricochet wonder of it all: the plaineverythingness of everything, in cahootswith the everythingness of everything else.- From Diffraction (for Carl Sagan)

I dont 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.

We live on the leash of our senses.

I dont want to be a passenger in my own life.

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.

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

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

Im fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will risk their lives to perform acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion for total strangers.

Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways.

We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature cant completely satisfy that yearning.

Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that theyre the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim.

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.

Ive always loved scuba diving and the cell-tickling feel of being underwater, though it poses unique frustrations. Alone, but with others, you may share the same sights and feelings, but you cant communicate well.

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