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There's No Place You Can Go On The Prairie That You Don't Hear The White Noise Of The Wind, Steady And Rough As Surf Curling Along A Non-existant Shore.
-Diane Ackerman
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There's No Place You

Diane Ackerman
There's No Place You Can Go On The Prairie That You Don't Hear The White Noise Of The Wind, Steady And Rough As Surf Curling Along A Non-existant Shore.
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Wind
White
Goes On
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What Do Those Of Us Who Aren't Tall, Flawlessly Sculpted Adolescents Do? Answer: Console Ourselves With How Relative Beauty Can Be... Thank Heavens For The Arousing Qualities Of Zest, Intelligence, Wit, Curiosity, Sweetness, Passion, Talent And Grace.
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As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.
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There's No Place You Can Go On The Prairie That You Don't Hear The White Noise Of The Wind, Steady And Rough As Surf Curling Along A Non-existant Shore.
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White
Goes On
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Singing
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Growing Up
Mirrors
Expression
Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.
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Smell
Vision
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Passion
Mean
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Play
Humanity
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...
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Nature
Memories
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.
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Happiness
Laughter
Heart
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...for Most People In The [jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] Nature Lived Only In Memory -- No Parks, Birds, Or Greenery Existed In The Ghetto -- And They Suffered The Loss Of Nature Like A Phantom-limb Pain, An Amputation That Scrambled The Body's Rhythms, Starved The Senses, And Made Basic Ideas About The World Impossible For Children To Fathom.
Children
Pain
Memories
The Heart Is A Museum, Filled With The Exhibits Of A Lifetime's Loves.
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Museums
Lifetime
... Love Is An Act Of Sedition, A Revolt Against Reason, An Uprising In The Body Politic, A Private Mutiny.
Love Is
Uprising
Mutiny
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Missing You
Sweet
Falling In Love
Flight Is Nothing But An Attitude In Motion.
Attitude
Flying
Flight
For If I Do Something, I Never Do It Thoughtlessly.
Ifs
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Self
Birth
Odd
Look At Your Feet. You Are Standing In The Sky. When We Think Of The Sky, We Tend To Look Up, But The Sky Actually Begins At The Earth.
Stars
Thinking
Clouds
Ecstasy Is What Everyone Craves - Not Love Or Sex, But A Hot-blooded, Soaring Intensity, In Which Being Alive Is A Joy And A Thrill. That Enravishment Doesn't Give Meaning To Life, And Yet Without It Life Seems Meaningless.
Inspirational
Sex
Giving
Symbolic Of Life, Hair Bolts From Our Head[s]. Like The Earth, It Can Be Harvested, But It Will Rise Again. We Can Change Its Color And Texture When The Mood Strikes Us, But In Time It Will Return To Its Original Form, Just As Nature Will In Time Turn Our Precisely Laid-out Cities Into A Weed-way.
Weed
Hair
Color
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Coffee
Flavor
Bitter
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Meaningful
Reality
Tears
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Soul
Share
Our Lives
Words Are Small Shapes In The Gorgeous Chaos Of The World.
World
Shapes
Chaos
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Distance
Balance
Human Nature
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Brain
Trying
Causes
An Animal On A Leash Is Not Tamed By The Owner. The Owner Is Extending Himself Through The Leash To That Part Of His Personality Which Is Pure Dog, That Part Of Him Which Just Wants To Eat, Sleep, Bark, Hump Chairs, Wet The Floor In Joy, And Drink Out Of A Toilet Bowl.
Dog
Sleep
Animal
The More We Exile Ourselves From Nature, The More We Crave Its Miracle Waters.
Water
Miracle
Exile
I Hate The Fearful Trimming Of Possibilities That Age Brings.
Hate
Age
Possibility
Nothing Reveals More About The Inner Life Of A People Than Their Arts.
Art
People
Inner Life
Culture Is What People Invent When They Have Lost Nature.
People
Culture
Lost
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Lying
Together
Records
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Stars
Lying
Secret
Not Much Is Known About Alligators. They Don't Train Well. And They're Unwieldy And Rowdy To Work With In Laboratories.
Rowdy
Alligators
Wells
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War
Ice
Age
Success Produces Success, Just As Money Produces Money.
Success
Positive Attitude
Produce
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Garden
Thinking
Mind
Who You Are Isn't Tied Solely To What You Say, Even Though It May Feel That Way To You Now.
Philosophy
May
Way
We're Dabbling In Eugenics All The Time, Breeding Ideal Crops To Replace Less Aesthetic Or Nutritious Or Hardy Varieties; Leveling Forests To Graze Cattle Or Erect Shopping Malls And Condos; Planting Groves Of A Few Familiar Trees That Homeowners And Industries Prefer.
Eugenics
Shopping
Tree
We Try To Exile Ourselves More And More From Nature - Not Always Consciously: We Build Houses; We Dismiss Nature; Nature Has To Be Outside, Because We're Inside. God Forbid Something Like A Cockroach Comes Inside, Or Some Dust.
Dust
House
Trying
When I Go Biking, I Am Mentally Far Far Away From Civilization. The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart.
Heart
Civilization
World
Though Most Of Us Don't Hunt, Our Eyes Are Still The Great Monopolists Of Our Senses. To Taste Or Touch Your Enemy Or Your Food, You Have To Be Unnervingly Close To It. To Smell Or Hear It, You Can Risk Being Further Off. But Vision Can Rush Through The Fields And Up The Mountains, Travel Across Time, Country, And Parsecs Of Outer Space, And Collect Bushel Baskets Of Information As It Goes. Animals That Hear High Frequencies Better Than We Do
Country
Eye
Animal
Who Would Deduce The Dragonfly From The Larva, The Iris From The Bud, The Lawyer From The Infant? ...we Are All Shape-shifters And Magical Reinventors. Life Is Really A Plural Noun, A Caravan Of Selves.
Nature
Self
Irises
We Tend To Think Of Memories As Monuments We Once Forged And May Find Intact Beneath The Weedy Growth Of Years. But, In A Real Sense, Memories Are Tied To And Describe The Present. Formed In An Idiosyncratic Way When They Happened, They're Also True To The Moment Of Recall, Including How You Feel, All You've Experienced, And New Values, Passions, And Vulnerability. One Never Steps Into The Same Stream Of Consciousness Twice.
Memories
Real
Passion
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.
Children
Heaven
Age
Smell Is The Mute Sense, The One Without Words.
Smell
Mute
The Knowing, I Told Myself, Is Only A Vapor Of The Mind, And Yet It Can Wreck Havok With One's Sanity.
Knowing
Mind
Wrecks
Much Of Life Becomes Background, But It Is The Province Of Art To Throw Buckets Of Light Into The Shadows And Make Life New Again.
Art
Light
Shadow
There Is A Way Of Beholding Nature Which Is A Form Of Prayer, A Way Of Minding Something With Such Clarity And Aliveness That The Rest Of The World Recedes. It . . . Gives The Brain A Small Vacation.
Inspirational
Prayer
Vacation
What Is Erotic? The Acrobatic Play Of The Imagination. The Sea Of Memories In Which We Bathe. The Way We Caress And Worship Things With Our Eyes. Our Willingness To Be Stirred By The Sight Of The Voluptuous. What Is Erotic Is Our Passion For The Liveliness Of Life.
Memories
Passion
Eye
Love Is The Great Intangible. ... Frantic And Serene, Vigilant And Calm, Wrung-out And Fortified, Explosive And Sedate -- Love Commands A Vast Army Of Moods. Hoping For Victory, Limping From The Latest Skirmish, Lovers Enter The Arena Once Again. ... Love Is The White Light Of Emotion. ... Everyone Admits That Love Is Wonderful And Necessary, Yet No One Can Agree On What It Is.
Army
Love Is
White
It's Animal By Animal That You Save A Species.
Animal
Animal Rights
Species
I Think That Very Often Younger Writers Don't Appreciate How Much Hard Work Is Involved In Writing. The Part Of Writing That's Magic Is The Thinnest Rind On The World Of Creation. Most Of A Writer's Life Is Just Work. It Happens To Be A Kind Of Work That The Writer Finds Fulfilling In The Same Way That A Watchmaker Can Happily Spend Countless Hours Fiddling Over The Tiny Cogs And Bits Of Wire. ... I Think The People Who End Up Being Writers Are People Who Don't Get Bored Doing That Kind Of Tight Focus In Small Areas.
Hard Work
Writing
Thinking
I'm An Earth Ecstatic, And My Creed Is Simple: All Life Is Sacred, Life Loves Life, And We Are Capable Of Improving Our Behavior Toward One Another. As Basic As That Is, For Me It's Also Tonic And Deeply Spiritual, Glorifying The Smallest Life-form And Embracing The Most Distant Stars.
Spiritual
Stars
Love Life
On Some Summer Days In New York City, The Air Hangs Thickly Visible, Like The Combined Exhalations Of Eight Million Souls. Steam Rising From Vents Underground Makes You Wonder If There Isn't One Giant Sweat Gland Lodged Beneath The City.
Summer
New York
Eight
In The Absence Of Touching And Being Touched, People Of All Ages Can Sicken And Grow Touched Starved. Touch Seems To Be As Essential As Sunlight.
People
Touching
Age
The Daftest Logic Brings Such Sweet Unrest.
Sweet
Unrest
Logic
Nature Is Also Great Fun. To Pretend That Nature Isn't Fun Is To Miss Much Of The Joy Of Being Alive.
Nature
Fun
Joy
I'm Fascinated How Often And With What Whole-heartedness People Will Risk Their Lives To Perform Acts Of Courage, Sacrifice, And Compassion For Total Strangers.
Sacrifice
Compassion
People
Writer's Block Is A Luxury Most People With Deadlines Don't Have.
Block
Luxury
People
The Biggest Threat To The Religious Experience May Well Come From Organized Religion Itself.
Religious
May
Threat
A Life Like An Intricately Woven Basket, Frayed, Worn, Broken, Unraveled, Reworked, Reknit From Many Of Its Original Pieces... Life Can Survive In The Constant Shadow Of Illness, And Even Rise To Moments Of Rampant Joy, But The Shadow Remains, And One Has To Make Space For It.
Space
Broken
Joy
I Don't Want To Be A Passenger In My Own Life.
Life
Knowing Who You Are
Want
We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses.
Philosophy
Medicine
Perception
American Writer 1803-1882 Play Is Our Brain's Favorite Way Of Learning.
Play
Brain
Way
We Humans Are Obsessed With Lights...perhaps It Is Our Way Of Hurling The Constellations Back At The Sky.
Light
Sky
Way
There Is That Unique Moment When One Confronts Something New And Astonishment Begins.
Weekend
Unique
Astonishment
I Consider Fiction A Very High-class Form Of Lying. I Enjoy And Admire It Enormously, But I Don't Think I'm Very Good At It.
Lying
Thinking
Class
We Ogle Plants And Animals Up Close On Television, The Internet And In The Movies. We May Not Worship The Animals We See, But We Still Regard Them As Necessary Physical And Spiritual Companions. Technological Nature Can't Completely Satisfy That Yearning.
Spiritual
Animal
May
Who Would Drink From A Cup When They Can Drink From The Source?
Cups
Authenticity
Drink
The Idea Of Safety Had Shrunk Into Particles - One Snug Moment, Then The Next. Meanwhile, The Brain Piped Fugues Of Worry And Staged Mind-theaters Full Of Tragedies And Triumphs, Because Unfortunately, The Fear Of Death Does Wonders To Focus The Mind, Inspire Creativity, And Heightens The Senses. Trusting One's Hunches Only Seems Gamble If One Has Time For Seem; Otherwise The Brain Goes On Autopilot And Trades The Elite Craft Of Analysis For The Best Rapid Insights That Float Up From Its Danger Files And Ancient Bag Of Tricks.
Creativity
Ideas
Worry
Though We Marry As Adults, We Don't Marry Adults. We Marry Children Who Have Grown Up And Still Rejoice In Being Children, Especially If We're Creative.
Marriage
Children
Creative
Tranquillity Hides In Small Spaces, And When Found Needs To Be Treasured, Because You Know It's A Phantom That Will Slip Away Again.
Space
Needs
Phantoms
We Tend To Think Of Heroes Only In Terms Of Violent Combat, Whether It's Against Enemies Or A Natural Disaster. But Human Beings Also Perform Radical Acts Of Compassion; We Just Don't Talk About Them, Or We Don't Talk About Them As Much.
Hero
Thinking
Compassion
Poetry Had Everything To Teach Me About Life.
Poetry
Teach
What Would Dawn Have Been Like, Had You Awakened? It Would Have Sung Through Your Bones. All I Can Do This Morning Is Let It Sing Through Mine.
Morning
Dawn
Bones
It's So Acceptably Easy For A Woman Not To Strive Too Hard, Not To Be Too Adventure-crazed, Not To Take Too Many Risks, Not To Enjoy Sex With Full Candor ... It Isn't Seemly For A Woman To Have That Much Zest.
Sex
Adventure
Zest
Habit, A Particularly Insidious Thug Who Chokes Passion And Smothers Love. Habit Puts Us On Autopilot.
Passion
Thug
Habit
Love Is The Most Important Thing In Our Lives, A Passion For Which We Would Fight Or Die, And Yet We're Reluctant To Linger Over Its Names. Without A Supple Vocabulary, We Can't Even Talk Or Think About It Directly.
Passion
Fighting
Love Is
We Evolved As Creatures Knitted Into The Fabric Of Nature, And Without Its Intimate Truths, We Can Find Ourselves Unraveling.
Fabric
Unraveling
Intimate
Shaped A Little Like A Loaf Of French Country Bread, Our Brain Is A Crowded Chemistry Lab, Bustling With Nonstop Neural Conversations.imagine The Brain, That Shiny Mound Of Being, That Mouse-gray Parliament Of Cells, That Dream Factory, That Petit Tyrant Inside A Ball Of Bone, That Huddle Of Neurons Calling All The Plays, That Little Everywhere, That Fickle Pleasuredome, That Wrinkled Wardrobe Of Selves Stuffed Into The Skull Like Too Many Clothes Into A Gym Bag.
Country
Dream
Clothes
Variety Is The Pledge That Matter Makes To Living Things.
Diversity
Matter
Living Things
Hurricane Season Brings A Humbling Reminder That, Despite Our Technologies, Most Of Nature Remains Unpredictable.
Technology
Hurricanes
Reminders
We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses. There Is No Way In Which To Understand The World Without First Detecting It Through The Radar-net Of Our Senses.
Music
Silence
Listening
No Matter How Politely One Says It, We Owe Our Existence To The Farts Of Blue-green Algae.
Blue
Algae
Green
If A Mind Is Just A Few Pounds Of Blood, Urea, And Electricity, How Does It Manage To Contemplate Itself, Worry About Its Soul, Do Time-and-motion Studies, Admire The Shy Hooves Of A Goat, Know That It Will Die, Enjoy All The Grand And Lesser Mayhems Of The Heart ?
Heart
Blood
Worry
Look At Your Feet. You Are Standing In The Sky. When We Think Of The Sky, We Tend To Look Up, But The Sky Actually Begins At The Earth. We Walk Through It, Yell Into It, Rake Leaves, Wash The Dog, And Drive Cars In It. We Breathe It Deep Within Us. With Every Breath, We Inhale Millions Of Molecules Of Sky, Heat Them Briefly, And Then Exhale Them Back Into The World.
Dog
Thinking
Sky
When You Consider Something Like Death, After Which (there Being No News Flash To The Contrary) We May Well Go Out Like A Candle Flame, Then It Probably Doesn't Matter If We Try Too Hard, Are Awkward Sometimes, Care For One Another Too Deeply, Are Excessively Curious About Nature, Are Too Open To Experience, Enjoy A Nonstop Expense Of The Senses In An Effort To Know Life Intimately And Lovingly.
Flames
Life And Death
Effort
For The Longest Time I Didn't Realize I Was Creative - I Just Thought I Was Strange.
Creativity
Creative
Strange
It's Essential To Tailor Rehab To What Impassions Someone. The Brain Gradually Learns By Riveting Its Attention-through Endless Repetitions.
Brain
Essentials
Attention
An Occasion, Catalyst, Or Tripwire?permits The Poet To Reach Into Herself And Haul Up Whatever Nugget Of The Human Condition Distracts Her At The Moment, Something That Can't Be Reached In Any Other Way.
Way
Nuggets
Moments
My Mother Always Said I Must Be Part Mongolian Because Of My Lotus-pale Complexion And Squid-ink Black Hair.
Mother
Hair
Squids
Nature Is More Like A Seesaw Than A Crystal, A Never-ending Conga Line Of Bold Moves And Corrections.
Moving
Lines
Crystals
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.
Commitment
Compassion
Hatred
In The Early Years Of The Uprising, We Survived On One Meal A Day Of Horse Meat And Soup, But By The End We Ate Only Dried Peas, Dogs, Cats And Birds.
Dog
Horse
Cat
The Well Of Nature Is Full Today. Time To Go Outside And Take A Drink.
Vices
Today
Drink
We Think Of It As A Sort Of Traffic Accident Of The Heart. It Is An Emotion That Scares Us More Than Cruelty, More Than Violence, More Than Hatred. We Allow Ourselves To Be Foiled By The Vagueness Of The Word. After All, Love Requires The Utmost Vulnerability. We Equip Someone With Freshly Sharpened Knives; Strip Naked; Then Invite Him To Stand Close. What Could Be Scarier?
Heart
Thinking
Knives
Couples Are Jigsaw Puzzles That Hang Together By Touching In Just Enough Points.
Couple
Jigsaw Puzzles
Touching
Wonder Is The Heaviest Element On The Periodic Table. Even A Tiny Fleck Of It Stops Time.
Healing
Elements
Tables
The Great Affair, The Love Affair With Life, Is To Live As Variously As Possible, To Groom One's Curiosity Like A High-spirited Thoroughbred, Climb Aboard, And Gallop Over The Thick, Sun-struck Hills Every Day. Where There Is No Risk, The Emotional Terrain Is Flat And Unyielding, And, Despite All Its Dimensions, Valleys, Pinnacles, And Detours, Life Will Seem To Have None Of Its Magnificent Geography, Only A Length. It Began In Mystery, And It Will End In Mystery, But What A Savage And Beautiful Country Lies In Between.
Life
Beautiful
Country
Our Sense Of Safety Depends On Predictability, So Anything Living Outside The Usual Rules We Suspect To Be An Outlaw, A Ghoul.
Ghouls
Safety
Usual
Because We Can't Escape Our Ancient Hunger To Live Close To Nature, We Encircle The House With Lawns And Gardens, Install Picture Windows, Adopt Pets And Boston Ferns, And Scent Everything That Touches Our Lives.
Garden
Boston
House
The Visual Image Is A Kind Of Tripwire For The Emotions.
Design
Emotion
Kind
Habitats Keep Evolving New Pageants Of Species, And We Shouldn't Interfere.
Habitat
Pageant
Evolve
So Before I Start Work On A Book, I'm Like A Pregnant Mole - I Obsessively Tidy And Order My Closets And Everything In My Study. Because There's Such A Cascade Of Images And Ideas That I'm Grapping With Mentally, I Couldn't Also Be In A Chaotic Setting.
Book
Order
Ideas
Flying Has Changed How We Imagine Our Planet, Which We Have Seen Whole From Space, So That Even The Farthest Nations Are Ecological Neighbors. It Has Changed Our Ideas About Time. When You Can Gird The Earth At 1,000 M.p.h., How Can You Endure The Tardiness Of A Plumber? Most Of All, Flying Has Changed Our Sense Of Our Body, The Personal Space In Which We Live, Now Elastic And Swift. I Could Be In Bombay For Afternoon Tea If I Wished. My Body Isn't Limited By Its Own Weaknesses; It Can Rush Through Space.
Ideas
Space
Flying
Fear Is Danger To Your Body, But Disgust Is Danger To Your Soul.
Soul
Body
Danger
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.
Law
Cities
People
Home Is Where The Heart Is, We Say, Rubbing The Flint Of One Abstraction Against Another.
Home
Heart
Home Is Where The Heart Is
In The Winter, I Enjoy Cross-country Skiing And Raising Orchids And Amaryllises. If I Could Grow Tropical Flowers As Perennials, I Would, Especially Hibiscus And Mandavilla.
Country
Flower
Winter
There Was Nothing To Do But Wait. It Is Always Like This For Naturalists, And For Poets--the Long Hours Of Travel And Preparation, And Then The Longer Hours Of Waiting. All For That One Electric, Pulse-revving Vision When The Universe Suddenly Declares Itself.
Long
Waiting
Preparation
One Of The Keystones Of Romantic Love - And Also Of The Ecstatic Religion Practiced By Mystics - Is The Powerful Desire To Become One With The Beloved.
Powerful
Romantic Love
Desire
Life Becomes A Lot Simpler For A Creative Person When He Or She Finds The Routine That Works Best. ... Get In The Habit Of Going Through The Routine Every Day, And On Some Of Those Days, You're Going To Be Lucky And Have Done Some Good Work. ... Go To Your Study, Close The Door, Invent Your Confidence.
Doors
Creative
Routine
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.
Inspirational
Couple
Jigsaw Puzzles
Nature Neither Gives Nor Expects Mercy.
Nature
Giving
Mercy
Words Are Such Small Things, Like Confetti In The Brain, And Yet They Are Color And Clarify Everything, They Can Stain The Mind Or Warp The Feelings.
Color
Feelings
Brain
I Believe Consciousness Is Brazenly Physical, A Raucous Mirage The Brain Creates To Help Us Survive.
Believe
Brain
Mirages
Life Is A Thing That Mutates Without Warning, Not Always In Enviable Ways. All Part Of The Improbable Adventure Of Being Alive, Of Being A Brainy Biped With Giant Dreams On A Crazy Blue Planet.
Life
Dream
Crazy
Devising A Vocabulary For Gardening Is Like Devising A Vocabulary For Sex. There Are The Correct Latin Names, But Most People Invent Euphemisms. Those Who Refer To Plants By Latin Name Are Considered More Expert, If A Little Pedantic.
Sex
Latin
Vocabulary
A Flower's Fragrance Declares To All The World That It Is Fertile, Available, And Desirable, Its Sex Organs Oozing With Nectar. Its Smell Reminds Us In Vestigial Ways Of Fertility, Vigor, Life-force, All The Optimism, Expectancy, And Passionate Bloom Of Youth. We Inhale Its Ardent Aroma And, No Matter What Our Ages, We Feel Young And Nubile In A World Aflame With Desire.
Sex
Spring
Flower
Things That Live By Night Live Outside The Realm Of 'normal' Time And So Suggest Living Outside The Realm Of Good And Evil, Since We Have Moralistic Feelings About Time. Chauvinistic About Our Human Need To Wake By Day And Sleep By Night, We Come To Associate Night Dwellers With People Up To No Good At A Time When They Have The Jump On The Rest Of Us And Are Defying Nature, Defying Their Circadian Rhythms.
Sleep
Night
People
We Are Defined By How We Place Our Attention.
Attention
Defined
The Brain Is Only Three Pounds Of Blood, Dream, And Electricity, And Yet From That Mortal Stew Come Beethoven's Sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's Jazz. Audrey Hepburn's Wish To Spend The Last Month Of Her Life In Somalia, Saving Children.
Dream
Children
Blood
Writing Is My Form Of Celebration And Prayer.
Prayer
Writing
Celebration
Adventure Is Not Something You Travel To Find. It's Something You Take With You, Or You're Not Going To Find It When You Arrive.
Travel
Adventure
Humans Are The Most Successful Invasives Of All Time.
Successful
Environment
All Time
Part Of The Irony Of Environmentalism Is Questing For Solutions When You Know You're Part Of The Problem.
Irony
Problem
Knows
Violets Smell Like Burnt Sugar Cubes That Have Been Dipped In Lemon And Velvet.
Garden
Smell
Sugar
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?
Exercise
Flames
People
Human Beings Are Sloshing Sacks Of Chemicals On The Move.
Moving
Chemicals
Humans
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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