Inspirational Quotes by Diane Ackerman (American Poet, Naturalist)

Diane Ackerman (b.1948) is an American author, poet, and naturalist. She is celebrated for her unique voice that intertwines science, nature, and the human experience.

Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Ackerman earned her B. A. from Pennsylvania State University (1970) and advanced degrees from Cornell University. Ackerman’s career includes teaching at the University of Pittsburgh (1980–83) and directing the writers’ program at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri (1984–86.) She was also a staff writer at The New Yorker (1988–94.)

Ackerman’s literary achievements include A Natural History of the Senses (1990,) an acclaimed exploration of human sensory experiences. In The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007,) Ackerman demonstrates her versatility with a non-fiction narrative set during World War II, chronicling the heroic actions of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who saved Jews by sheltering them in the Warsaw Zoo. This work was later adapted into a successful 2017 feature film.

As a poet, Ackerman has earned critical acclaim for collections like Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems (1991.) Reverse Thunder (1988,) pays homage to the life of Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun, poet, and naturalist from Mexico.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Diane Ackerman

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
—Diane Ackerman
Topics: Love

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
—Diane Ackerman
Topics: Carpe-diem, Nature, Life, Living

After all, coffee is bitter, a flavor from the forbidden and dangerous realm.
—Diane Ackerman

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world; shapes that bring the world into focus, corral ideas, hone thoughts. They paint watercolors of perception.
—Diane Ackerman

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
—Diane Ackerman
Topics: Discovery, Country

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
—Diane Ackerman
Topics: Poets, Poetry

Uncertainty is the essence of romance.
—Diane Ackerman

We live on the leash of our senses.
—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

There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.
—Diane Ackerman

Though most of us don’t hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do
—Diane Ackerman

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Inspirational Quotes by Diane Ackerman (American Poet, Naturalist)

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