Diane Ackerman

We may neutralize one or more of our senses temporarily—by floating in body-temperature water, for instance—but that only heightens the others. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses

It is both our panic and our privilege to be mortal and sense-full. We live on the leash of our senses. Although they enlarge us, they also limit and restrain us, but how beautifully.

senses—how they evolved, how they can be extended, what their limits are, to which ones we have attached taboos, and what they can teach us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit

Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. T

Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences

Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it’s almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn’t smelled it

Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. Lacking a vocabulary, we are left tongue-tied, groping for words in a sea of inarticulate pleasure and exaltation

The charm of language is that, though it’s human-made, it can on rare occasions capture emotions and sensations which aren’t. But the physiological links between the smell and language centers of the brain are pitifully weak

Smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names

Paul West writes that “blood smells like dust.” An arresting metaphor, one that relies on indirection, as metaphors of smell almost always do