We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?
Diane AckermanNo matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
Diane Ackerman[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.
Diane AckermanThough 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