John Burnside Quotes
I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who recognise that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.
Quotes to Explore
-
They don't call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I'm no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.
-
The evidence of a Jewish civilization going back more than two millennia is overwhelmingly borne out in the archaeology of the region. The heritage of the Jews in Palestine is documented.
-
I don't believe that intelligence can be reduced to a number, frankly. But I can see how doing exactly that produces a useful sorting mechanism in our society in order to separate children into categories of promising and doomed. The tests seem arbitrary and without real scientific value and yet have lasting consequences.
-
As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.
-
We only have a certain amount of energy for each day. If we use it for the wrong purpose, if we focus on the negative or dwell on whoever hurt us, then we're not going to have the energy we need for the right purposes.
-
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.
-
Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It's real easy to fall.
-
As a boy, I wanted to be the Peruvian Diego Maradona. Sadly, Peru hasn't made the World Cup since 1982, so I guess I did well to choose something different.
-
Actors don't have real value.
-
I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.
-
I'm happy. I give thanks every morning that I can get up, that I still have my husband with me. I'm extremely grateful. After all, how many 93-year-old cover girls do you know?
-
Sport can bring communities together and can release a lot of pent-up emotions.
-
When I was releasing EPs by myself, I was generating royalties. And when I signed, I thought I'd put those royalties into other artists. And interestingly, streaming is most of the income for those artists.
-
I've been an atheist since I was nine years old. And my mom is really religious, so we have a strange relationship. But if my mother was right, what would be the reason that the gods could let anything bad happen in the world?
-
I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.
-
Like many kids, I was thrown into recreational soccer in my town, and from there, I grew to love it. Everywhere I went, I carried a soccer ball with me.
-
Probably the only way Woody Allen and I are similar is that he has a lot to say about Nietzsche.
-
Before and after emancipation, the Negro, in self-defense, was propelled toward the white employer. The endowments of wealthy white men have developed great institutions of learning for the Negro, but the freedom of action on the part of these same universities has been curtailed in proportion as they are indebted to white philanthropies.
-
I have a knack for choosing the wrong people.
-
Moneymaking was never anything to me. I was happy never making money; I just was happy doing things I liked. But I fell into the money thing. I now don't feel guilty about it, but I am determined to give away the bulk of it and enjoy doing it.
-
I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is okay, to speak out.
-
I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.
-
When I was young, all I wanted and expected from life was to sit quietly in some corner doing my work without the public paying attention to me. And now see what has become of me.
-
I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who recognise that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.
