Quote of the Day (Diane Ackerman, on Imagining the Reader)

“Nearly every author I know imagines one or more readers while writing a book. It’s a bloom of creative telepathy. The reader is a part of yourself, held at a distance, and becomes an important sounding board for the tone and language of the pages, an intimate ally. Readers and writers provide a kind of outside family for one another.”—Diane Ackerman, “Romanticizing the Reader,” The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Apr.  26, 2015

(Photo taken at the 2007 Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas, Nov. 4, 2007, by Larry D. Moore)

Quote of the Day (Diane Ackerman, on the Music of Fall Insects)

“Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool. Carolina crickets (which roost far beyond the Carolinas) furnish a buzzing trill. Grasshoppers sound as if they're shuffling decks of cards. Snowy tree crickets lend a chirping melody to the ensemble. It's the ultimate jug band using body parts as instruments.”-- Diane Ackerman, “OPINION: A Little Night Music,” The New York Times, September 23, 2012

I took the photo accompanying this post earlier this week in Sea Pines Nature Preserve in Hilton Head, S.C.