Diane Ackerman Quotes

129 Sourced Quotes

As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.

Diane Ackerman
Suddenly, smoke billowed from underneath the bridge. No, not smoke but a column of bats.

Diane Ackerman
Fifteen billion years ago, when the Universe let rip and, in disciplined panic, Creation spewed mazy star-treacle and resin, shrinking balls of debut fire smoldered and glitched.

Diane Ackerman
Nothing looks more contented than a resting alligator. The mouth falls naturally into a crumpled smile, the eyes half close in a sleepy sort of way.

Diane Ackerman
We say dawn breaks, as if something were shattering, but what we mean is that waves of light crest over the earth.

Diane Ackerman
People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade cushions, and the sun never sets.

Diane Ackerman
Bats kept surging out, and soon four columns stretched miles across the sky. A few strays looped and fed near us, passing like shuttles through the weave of the trees. The night was noticeably free of insects, but that was no surprise. These bats would eat five thousand pounds of insects that one night alone.

Diane Ackerman
No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Diane Ackerman
Bats eat so much food each evening that they have weighed in at as much as 50 percent heavier after one night's dining.

Diane Ackerman