Diane Ackerman

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern read more

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived
just the length read more

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived
just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as
well.

Apes do it. Scorpions do it. Fireflies do it,

Apes do it. Scorpions do it. Fireflies do it,

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.