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.

Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) American poet, author, naturalist

Newsweek (1986-09-22)

Ackerman was 37 at the time, and had already been a teacher, a cow-hand, and a pilot, as well as having two volumes of her poetry.