John Burnside Quotes
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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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'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to moving to my old home area of Fife.
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With all the goodwill and local initiative in the world, we are not about to rewild anything until we change our way of thinking about our place in the creaturely world.
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The older I get, the happier my childhood becomes.
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I remember when I first encountered anthropocentrism. I was in primary school and, in preparation for our confirmation, the class was learning about the afterlife.
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Given the right information to help them decide, people will opt for conditions that benefit our creaturely neighbours, even where they have no particular interest in larks or cuckoo wasps - because those conditions benefit us.
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I moved south when I was 11 years old, moved to England. I've lived in all kinds of places, all parts of England.
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Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.
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Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.
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I remember playing the Mad Hatter in a school play and feeling very comfortable in the character.
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Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural world's most elegant phenomena.
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Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.
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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 really like to try my hand at everything, and I think it's probably dangerous to let oneself be pigeon-holed, not necessarily by other people, but in one's own mind.
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Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.
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My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
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It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key pollinators, the human population would collapse in less than a decade.
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My father was this big, tough guy, almost heroic in proportion to me as a child. It was only later that I saw how fearful he was.
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If nature offers no home, then we must make a home one way or another. The only question is how.
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I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.
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The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.
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With each passing decade, history becomes less real for us, less immediate and essential to our way of life, and so, like 'green' nature, more of a commodity or an advertising gimmick.
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For 10 years, I gave away my possessions every year and moved on to a new place.
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The woods were a boon; all too often, the forest offered danger and mystery. Yet it could be liberating. If you entered that wild place on its own terms, you might be accorded wisdom.