Quotes from Diane Ackerman

I have one talent, he wrote, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas.

If any creature is in danger, you save it, human or animal.

Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.

More broadly, the Nazis were ardent animal lovers and environmentalists who promoted calisthenics and healthy living, regular trips into the countryside, and far-reaching animal rights policies as they rose to power. Göring took pride in sponsoring wildlife sanctuaries (green

Thank you, Merciful Lord, for having arranged to provide flowers with fragrance, glow worms with their glow, and to make the stars in the sky sparkle.

Heschel wrote of his childhood in Warsaw, there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.

If organs as elemental as brain and heart can be persuaded to regenerate, and others, like ears and corneas, can be fashioned from living ink, how will that change us as a species? Will the printing of organs affect our evolution? Could it alter our genes?

the trend for rewilding our cities is growing. It's positive, it enlightens, it's widespread, and it helps. We need to retrofit and reimagine cities as planet-friendly citadels. They're our hives and reefs. Sea mussels aren't the only animals living in individual shells that are glued together.

It's not enough to do research from a distance. It's by living beside animals that you learn their behavior and psychology. On Jan's daily

According to Jan, The personality of animals will develop according to how you raise, train, educate them—you can't generalize about them. Just like people who own dogs and cats will tell you, no two are exactly alike. Who knew that a rabbit could learn to kiss a human, open doors, or give us reminders about dinnertime? Wicek's

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I'm stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else. - From Diffraction (for Carl Sagan)

For if I won't leap up and ride, who will? And, if no one will ride, when at last the spangly caravan is over, silence rules, and we are left staring across an empty street into the blank of each other's eyes, who will tell about the drums and the cartwheels of light? Who will say what marvel it was swept by?

Inevitably, fear raided everyone's mood. But as zookeepers, the Zabínskis understood both vigilance and predators; in a swamp of vipers, one planned every footstep. Shaped by the gravity of wartime, it wasn't always clear who or what could be considered outside or inside, loyal or turncoat, predator or prey.

We ask the poet to reassure us by giving us a geometry of living, in which all things add up and cohere, to tell us how things buttress once another, circle round and intermelt.

one legend has it that Jews found Poland attractive because the country's name sounded like the Hebrew imperative po lin (rest here).

Play is our brain's favorite way of learning

All our senses feed the brain, and if it diets mainly on cruelty and suffering, how can it remain healthy?

husk or shell that has grown up around a spark of holiness, masking its light (203): Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005), p. 93.   Yiddish's

Meanwhile, the war storm blew violently, scaring all, and casting a shadow on the lives of our Guests, who fled from the entrance of crematoriums and the thresholds of gas chambers, needing more than refuge. They desperately needed hope that a safe haven even existed, that the war's horrors would one day end, while they drifted along in the strange villa even its owners referred to as an ark.

It's a funny thing, Jan went on, she's not a child, she's not stupid, but her relationship with other people tends to be very naïve; she believes that everyone is honest and kind. Punia knows that there are bad people around her, too, she recognizes them from a distance. But she really can't believe that they may hurt

The Underground Peasant Movement adopted the slogan of As little, as late, and as bad as possible, and set about sabotaging deliveries

So couples relive romantic memories, families watch home movies, and friends catch up with each other, as if they've lagged behind on a trail. Sifting memory for saliences to report, they reveal how vital pieces of their identity have changed. Aging, we tailor memories to fit our evolving silhouette, and as life's vocabulary changes, memories change to fathom the new order. Lose your memory, and you may drift in an alien world.

Why was it, she asked herself, that animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast?

Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. In time, a pair invents its own commonwealth, complete with anthems, rituals, and lingos—a cult of two with fallible gods.