For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.

— Diane Ackerman

For 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

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

How can love's spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable?

— Diane Ackerman

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

— Diane Ackerman

I 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

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

— Diane Ackerman

I don't 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.

— Diane Ackerman

I'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 abandonment. One succumbs so easily to mind spasms, worry spasms. [p. 95]

— Diane Ackerman

I'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