Diane Ackerman
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"Diane Ackerman" is an American author, poet, and natural history/naturalist known best for her work A Natural History of the Senses. Her writing style combines poetry, Colloquialism/colloquial history, and popular science. She has taught at various universities, including Columbia University/Columbia and Cornell University/Cornell.

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Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

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.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

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

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

We live on the leash of our senses.

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

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...

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.