Diane Ackerman - Deep play (1999)

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There are truths that can only be learned when you're dancing in chains.

Diane Ackerman
I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

Diane Ackerman
One can live at a low flame. Most people do. For some, life is an exercise in moderation (best china saved for special occasions), but given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too
deeply?

Diane Ackerman
The well of nature is full today. Time to go outside and take a drink.

Diane Ackerman
The biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.

Diane Ackerman
I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Diane Ackerman
Language is a playing with words until they can impersonate physical objects and abstract ideas.

Diane Ackerman
Who would drink from a cup when they can drink from the source?

Diane Ackerman
Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.

Diane Ackerman
Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.

Diane Ackerman
Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things.

Diane Ackerman
Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks.

Diane Ackerman
Like love, travel makes you innocent again.

Diane Ackerman
If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

Diane Ackerman
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

Diane Ackerman
Play is an activity enjoyed for its own sake. It is our brain's favorite way of learning and maneuvering.

Diane Ackerman
I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.

Diane Ackerman