John Burnside famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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

#Bears #Definitions #Might
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

#Passion #Mean #Nerd
My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable force that might, at any moment, break loose, and do something terrible. [Burnside, p. 27]
-- John Burnside

#Father #Men #Rooms
and because what we learn in the dark remains all our lives, a noise like the sea, displacing the day's pale knowledge, you'll come to yourself in a glimmer of rainfall or frost, the burnt smell of autumn, a meeting of parallel lines, and know you were someone else for the longest time, pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist, lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.
-- John Burnside

#Autumn #Dark #Sea
As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasnâ€™t here. Before that, my parents werenâ€™t here. And before thatâ€¦
-- John Burnside

#Children #Ideas #Parent
Our response to the world is essentially one of wonder, of confronting the mysterious with a sense, not of being small, or insignificant, but of being part of a rich and complex narrative.
-- John Burnside

#World #Narrative #Mysterious
Andy Brown is one of our most interesting and exciting younger poets. With its love of ideas and language, his work demonstrates that there need be no barriers in poetry; that the philosophical, the lyrical and the playful can be combined in work of assured and generous vision.
-- John Burnside

#Philosophical #Ideas #Interesting

Maturity is the ability to do a job whether you're supervised or not; finish a job once it's started; carry money without spending it; and the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.
A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.
Without hope of reward Provide help to others. Bear suffering alone, And share your pleasures with beggars.
Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate, Born where Heav'n influence scarce can penetrate. In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like, They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.
I was already headed for Hell, I might as well enjoy the ride.
The search which takes place in my studio might best be described as a mining operation, a vertical dig in which a number of discoveries are apt to surface from a single shaft.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction ... nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Iâ€™m not afraid of anything that might happen to me on this earth, because I know no matter what, nothing can take my spirit from me.

John Burnside famous quotes

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