121 Quotes by John Burnside

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

For 10 years, I gave away my possessions every year and moved on to a new place.