John Burnside Quotes
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A man was defined, in my father's circles, by what he could bear, the pain he could shrug off, the warmth or comfort he could deny himself.
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What we should be doing is saving habitats, not single species, no matter what their cuteness factor.
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Sometimes, when the wind hits hard and icicles form on the sea cliffs, we can all come together - and at those times, we are at our best.
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I know that the only reason American landscapes sometimes disappoint me is that, just a century before I was born, the great rivers and prairies and wild forests still existed. And they were sublime.
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For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and woodland of Kingswood, with its overgrown but stately avenue of copper-barked sequoias, felt like a local version of paradise.
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One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I'm going to write a book about my father.'
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I don't want to suggest that matrimony was necessarily a tragic affair - some of our neighbours' marriages seemed quite functional, if somewhat routine; nevertheless, in the workaday world, it is wedlock that is most likely to offer the occasion for life-threatening disappointment.
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You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.
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I'm an insomniac, so my perfect reader is probably another insomniac.
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I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever.
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'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.
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Growing up, I lived in a house without art: no picture books on the shelves, no visits to museums, no posters on the bedroom wall.
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Andoya is in a different world, set at the northern edge of Europe in what seems to be a time and weather of its own.
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I think humans have to learn a new way of dwelling on this earth. A way of living with their companions: animals, plants and fish.
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I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; perhaps they think wildness could work only in a larger space.
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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.
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What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gravity is not just a limitation, but also a possible partner in an intriguing, potentially joyful game.
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I don't like the term 'mental illness.' I'd rather just say 'mad.' Just like I always say 'loony bin,' not 'mental hospital.'
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A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a renewed appreciation of the elegance of natural form and a renewed sense of wonder at the variety of the world we inhabit.
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For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the primary way by which it knows itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.
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The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues - compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious - are far from conventionally heroic.
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All my life, I have been a celebrant of Halloween. For me, it is the most important day of the year, the turning point in the old pagan calendar.
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I'm interested in the way language is used to navigate the world around us.
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As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.