01c. 1948 ADI'd suffered many losses in recent years after my father mother uncle aunt and cousin had all passed away. In her final years my mother often lamented that there was no one alive who had known her as a girl and I was starting to understand how spooked she'd felt. I wasn't sure I could take any more abandonments. One succumbs so easily to mind spasms, worry spasms. [p. 95]Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
02c. 1948 ADHow can love's spaciousnessbe conveyed in the narrowconfines of one syllable?Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
03c. 1948 ADWonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
04c. 1948 ADListen, I'd rather lie naked in a plowed field under an incontinent horse for a week than have to read that paragraph again!Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
05c. 1948 ADI'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 / quote ↗
06c. 1948 ADAt some point, one asks, "Toward what end is my life lived?" A great freedom comes from being able to answer that question. A sleeper can be decoyed out of bed by the sheer beauty of dawn on the open seas. Part of my job, as I see it, is to allow that to happen. Sleepers like me need at some point to rise and take their turn on morning watch for the sake of the planet, but also for their own sake, for the enrichment of their lives. From the deserts of Namibia to the razor-backed Himalayas, there are wonderful creatures that have roamed the Earth much longer than we, creatures that not only are worthy of our respect but could teach us about ourselves.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
07c. 1948 ADFor me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
08c. 1948 ADI may enter a zone of transcendence, in which I marvel at all the accidents of fate, since the beginning of life on earth, that led to my genes being created and my standing in this particular garden in a contemplative and imagining mind. I’ve been reading recently how reflection evolved. what a fascinating solution to the rigors of survival…how amazing that a few basic ingredients- the same ones that form the mountains, plants, and rivers- when arranged differently and stressed could result in us.More and more of late, I find myself standing outside of life, with a sense of the human saga laid out before me. it is a private vision, balanced between youth and old age, a vision in which I understand how caught up in striving we humans get, and a little of why, and how difficult it is even to recognize, since it feels integral to our nature and is. but I find it interesting that, according to many religions, life and begins and ends in a garden.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
09c. 1948 ADStudies show that the IQ range of most creative people is surprisingly narrow, around 120 to 130. Higher IQs can perform certain kinds of tasks better--logic, feats of memory, and so on. But if the IQ is much higher or lower than that, the window of creativity closes. Nonetheless, for some reason we believe more is better, so people yearn for tip-top IQs, and that calls for bigger memories. A fast, retentive memory is handy, but no skeleton key for survival.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
10c. 1948 ADWho 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 / quote ↗
11c. 1948 ADSymbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
12c. 1948 ADOne morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds.Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day.Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
13c. 1948 ADDevising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
14c. 1948 ADAlligators have beautiful undulating skin, which feels dense, spongy, solid, like the best eraser.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
15c. 1948 ADCouples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. ... We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children .... [p. 15]Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
17c. 1948 ADLove is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
18c. 1948 ADIt began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
19c. 1948 ADI was moving in a narrow range between busy distractedness and a pervasive sadness whose granules seemed to enter each cell, weighing it down... I ghosted between islands of anxiety... a fatigue that dulled my zest, decanted it. Sorrow felt like a marble coat I couldn’t shed.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
20c. 1948 ADWhen I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
21c. 1948 ADEurope enjoyed a heritage of fairy tales alive with talking animals--some almost real, other deliciously bogus-- to spark child's fantasies and gallop grownups to the cherished haunts of childhood. It pleased Antonina that her zoo offered on orient of fabled creatures, where book pages sprang alive and people could parley with ferocious animals.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
22c. 1948 ADSuffering took hold of me like a magic spell abolishing all differences between friends and strangers.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
23c. 1948 ADIt began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
24c. 1948 ADI believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. But I also sense the universe is magical, greater than the sum of its parts, which I don't attribute to a governing god, but simply to the surprising, ecstatic, frightening everyday reality we all know. Ultimately, I find consciousness a fascinating predicament for matter to get into.Diane Ackerman / quote ↗
