Sunderlin Burnside Quotes

I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever. ~ John Burnside

Burnside was in the best position on the field, could have moved at any time toward a weak defense, a defense that was weaker still ~ Jeff Shaara

The commanding general publishes, for the information of all concerned, that hereafter all persons found within our lines who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death. ~ Ambrose Burnside

In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo's messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the ancient Egyptians and, in the case of the Lakota Sioux, embodiments of clear vision, speed and single-minded dedication. ~ 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

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

Sometimes, coming home in the early morning like this, I'd imagine things had altered while I was absent: a knife on the bread board that I didn't remember leaving out, a book face down on the table, a cup brimming with tea and dishwater in the sink. The evidence I wanted didn't need to be too elaborate or detailed. I could have constructed an entire afterlife from a half-moon of lemon rind or a small blister of jam on the tablecloth. ~ John Burnside

My poems tend to be more celebratory and lyrical, and the novels so far pretty dark. Poetry doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate tool for exploring that. ~ John Burnside

Our ancestors went to the woods to find fuel; they set snares there for birds and gathered nuts and fungi. ~ John Burnside

The definition of a page-turner really aught to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one. ~ 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

What is essential - the one thing that could stop us being coarsened to other lives - is that we feel a great, living wave of animal life all around us, covering the earth. ~ John Burnside

I didn't mean to kill nobody ... I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord. ~ R.L. Burnside

Growing up, I learnt to think, 'Let's make it a big night tonight, as you never know what's going to happen next.' So now I have enough, I take too much; when I get the chance to have a fine dinner, I will. And it's had an effect on my health. ~ 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

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

A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a renewed appreciation of the elegance of natural form and a renewed sense of wonder at the variety of the world we inhabit. ~ John Burnside

One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890. ~ John Burnside

That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love things with a passion and nobody bothers you about it. ~ John Burnside

It's laughable, looking back, to see the processes I went through, pretending to make a reasoned decision. No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible. All the time, I knew where I was going, the elements of my fulfillment or ruin were always present; I only had to work my way into that seam of desire and find the hidden vein of dross or gold. It's not a question of predestination, it's just that free will and destiny are illusions, false opposites, consolations. In the end, they are one and the same: a single process. You choose what you choose and it could not have been otherwise: the choice is destiny. It was there all along, but any alternative you might have considered is an absurd diversion, because it is in your nature to make one choice rather than another. That is identity. To speak of freedom or destiny is absurd because it suggests there is something outside yourself, directing your life, where really it is of the essence: identity, the craftwork of the soul. ~ John Burnside

What we should be doing is saving habitats, not single species, no matter what their cuteness factor. ~ John Burnside

Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said went far toward confirming one's belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute. ~ Shelby Foote

The animal encounter poem is now so distinct a genre that it would be possible to create a full-length anthology from deer encounter poems alone, and many varieties of experience would emerge from such an exercise. ~ John Burnside

Clearly, any well-kept garden will be a source of pleasure in the summer months; in the bleak urban midwinter, however, there are few activities more likely to energise the spirit than a botanical walk. ~ John Burnside

Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of jobs were lost as pits were shut down. ~ John Burnside

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

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks. ~ Ian Rankin

Being about to land on the soil of North Carolina, the general commanding desires his soldiers to remember that they are here to support the Constitution and the laws, to put down rebellion, and to protect the persons and property of the loyal and peaceable citizens of the State. ~ Ambrose Burnside

Nd she had started to relax - but she was relaxing into something terrible, and she was going about the world in a state of complete indifference to whatever might come, a wild girl with dream patterns and faint, dark animals etched on her skin, a creature who had passed beyond fear and was, therefore, beyond saving. ~ John Burnside

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

I don't like the term 'mental illness.' I'd rather just say 'mad.' Just like I always say 'loony bin,' not 'mental hospital.' ~ John Burnside

I am in favor of a foreign policy that will cultivate relations of peace with all nations, and I will never give my influence, either as a private citizen or a public servant, for war, so long as it can be honorably avoided. ~ Ambrose Burnside

He was someone who had to live alone, someone who found it difficult to be with others for any length of time, because he only had one mode - that discreet art of withdrawal which had, no doubt, taken him years to perfect. He had no other strategies for getting along with people and, though his colleagues probably saw this as the mark of a gentle, erudite, considerate soul, I was suddenly able to see right through it. Not because I was so very perceptive, but because I was so like him. He had been living in that one mode for so long, he had almost forgotten about it, but I was a near-beginner, and for me it was painfully obvious. ~ John Burnside

The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks. ~ John Burnside

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days. ~ John Burnside

[ ... ] and the barred owl calls from the well of my mind,
more echo than thought, as it fades through the wind
and flickers away to the silence beyond
like that voice, in myself, of another. ~ John Burnside