John Burnside Quotations | Page 2

As attractive as it is, the idea that nature can exist beyond our dangerous 'instinct for happiness' is never the whole story.

As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.

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.

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.

A mad person isn't someone who sees what isn't there; he's someone who sees what is there but that others can't see. I really believe that.

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.

Worldwide, enormous areas of peatland are still being lost to agricultural development, drainage schemes, overgrazing, and exploitation-based infrastructure development projects such as roads, electricity pylons, telephone masts and gas pipelines.

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.

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.

Once upon a time, forests were repositories of magic for the human race.