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A forest - the word dates back to the Norman occupancy, when it meant an area set aside for England's violent new masters to hunt boar and deer - is necessarily larger than a wood. It belonged to the king and was a fit place for his recreation.
John Burnside -
In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ourselves, and we can only do this by abandoning the old, grandiose, profit-seeking schemes so beloved of our masters and learning to till the soil, live to scale, and live within our means.
John Burnside
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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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
For 10 years, I gave away my possessions every year and moved on to a new place.
John Burnside -
I remember playing the Mad Hatter in a school play and feeling very comfortable in the character.
John Burnside -
'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.
John Burnside
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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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside
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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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
The fabric of a garden is determined as much by its textures as by its tonal range and architectural flair.
John Burnside -
When I was ten years old, my family left a cold, damp prefab in West Fife and moved to Corby, Northamptonshire, where my father quickly found work at what was then the Stewarts & Lloyds steelworks.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside
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The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.
John Burnside -
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.
John Burnside -
Once upon a time, forests were repositories of magic for the human race.
John Burnside -
If nature offers no home, then we must make a home one way or another. The only question is how.
John Burnside