Quotes from Diane Ackerman

Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. x.   adhesions

Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, Polish Customs, Traditions, and Folklore (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1996), p. 259.   people

I like this little animal so much, and since my new name is Pawe? [Paul], I think his should be Piotr [Peter]. Then we can be two disciples!

about 1,500 guerrillas fought back at every chance.

What Himmler planned as a gift-wrapped massacre became a siege lasting nearly a month, until at last the Germans decided to torch everything—buildings, bunkers, sewers, and all the people in them.

A frog croaked a deep throaty I am .

Smell was our first sense, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from our olfactory stalks. We think because we smelled.

boulevards. Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals to death. In

Try to remember that, by definition, an estimate is always wrong (two months equals two years in dog days), and that cost quickens with time. Expense is a river whose rapids never rest.

I only did my duty—if you can save somebody's life, it's your duty to try.

El arte es más complejo, por supuesto. La emoción intensa crea tensión, y queremos que el artista la sienta por nosotros, que sufra, que goce y describa las cimas de su respuesta apasionada a la vida de modo que podamos apreciarla a distancia segura y podamos saber mejor cuáles son las dimensiones del espectro completo de la experiencia humana.

La variedad es la promesa que la materia hace a los seres vivos.

Cursed by its strategic location in eastern Europe, Poland had been invaded, sacked, and carved up many times, its borders ebbing and flowing; some village children learned five languages just to speak with neighbors. War wasn't something Antonina wanted to think about, especially since her last experience of war stole both of her parents, so she assured herself, as most Poles did, of their solid alliance with France, keeper of a powerful army, and Britain's sworn protection.

The Nazi goal of more living space (Lebensraum) applied pointedly to Poland, where Hitler had ordered his troops to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the Lebensraum

There one could also find a special kind of pierogi, large chewy kreplach: fist-sized dumplings filled with seasoned stew meat and onions before being boiled, baked, then fried, the last step glazing and toughening them like bagels. The

Can there be a benediction of deer on a chilly spring morning? I think so. Their otherworldliness stops the day in its tracks, focuses it on the hypnotic beauty of nature, and then starts the day again with a rush of wonder. There is a way of sitting quietly and beholding nature which is a form of meditation and prayer, and like those healing acts it calms the spirit.

Few things are begun with as much hope as a garden, and it can disappoint in direct proportion to one's anticipation.

Consider the inner garden, that secret glade filled with day dreams, feelings, and memories. Sometimes they can be made physical, a goal of metaphysical gardening. Otherwise they remain mere reflections in a gazing ball.

Kiddush ha-Shem, the principle of service to God, acquired a new definition in the Ghetto, where it became the struggle to preserve life in the face of destruction. A similar word arose in German—überleben—which meant to prevail and stay alive, a

A garden always includes many smaller gardens. Indeed, no garden exists as a single thing. By its nature, it is plural, just as each person is a symposium of cells, or an arch is a strength made from many weaknesses.

One of Frank's key tasks was to kill all people of influence, such as teachers, priests, landowners, politicians, lawyers, and artists. Then he began rearranging huge masses of the population: over a span of five years, 860,000 Poles would be uprooted and resettled; 75,000 Germans would take over their lands; 1,300,000 Poles would be shipped to Germany as slave labor; and 330,000 would simply be shot.

I believe in God,' Frank Lloyd Wright said, only I spell it Nature. Gardeners spend much of their time kneeling in postures of prayer.

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.

I will honor all life —wherever and in whatever form it may dwell—on Earth my home, and in the mansions of the stars.