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John Burnside Quotes


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Quotes by John Burnside

Showing 21-30 of 95 Quotes by John Burnside

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

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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.

~John Burnside

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Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.

~John Burnside

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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.

~John Burnside

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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.'

~John Burnside

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My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.

~John Burnside

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What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.

~John Burnside

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The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper.

~John Burnside

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My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.

~John Burnside

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Poetry stands or falls by its music.

~John Burnside

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Biography

Nationality: Scottish

Type: Writer

Born: March 19th, 1955

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