John Burnside quote: "What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gravity is not just a limitation, but also a possible partner in an intriguing, potentially joyful game."

Snow isn't just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grim...
JOHN BURNSIDE

If nature offers no home, then we must make a home one way or another. The only question is how.
JOHN BURNSIDE

All my life, I have been a celebrant of Halloween. For me, it is the most important day of the year,...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Clearly, any well-kept garden will be a source of pleasure in the summer months; in the bleak urban ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The woods were a boon; all too often, the forest offered danger and mystery. Yet it could be liberat...
JOHN BURNSIDE

This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, w...
JOHN BURNSIDE

There is a red sandy beach in the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia that is unlike any other shore landscap...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Sometimes, when the wind hits hard and icicles form on the sea cliffs, we can all come together - an...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less cas...
JOHN BURNSIDE

In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo's messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the an...
JOHN BURNSIDE

A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a ren...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The animal encounter poem is now so distinct a genre that it would be possible to create a full-leng...
JOHN BURNSIDE

What is essential - the one thing that could stop us being coarsened to other lives - is that we fee...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Given the right information to help them decide, people will opt for conditions that benefit our cre...
JOHN BURNSIDE

When I was ten years old, my family left a cold, damp prefab in West Fife and moved to Corby, Northa...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my firs...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Worldwide, enormous areas of peatland are still being lost to agricultural development, drainage sch...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I think humans have to learn a new way of dwelling on this earth. A way of living with their compani...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The fabric of a garden is determined as much by its textures as by its tonal range and architectural...
JOHN BURNSIDE

'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to mo...
JOHN BURNSIDE

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ours...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who reco...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the pr...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incr...
JOHN BURNSIDE

We do not need to be heroes to save the world; all we need is humility, a critical view of the comme...
JOHN BURNSIDE

High Alpine meadows, like their near relatives prairie, desert and certain varieties of wetland, tea...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It may be a cliche, but cliche or not, I fear the day when the only marsh harriers or peregrines I c...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I don't want to suggest that matrimony was necessarily a tragic affair - some of our neighbours&...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I don't like the term 'mental illness.' I'd rather just say 'mad.' Just like...
JOHN BURNSIDE

What we should be doing is saving habitats, not single species, no matter what their cuteness factor...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Hunted for sport by the rich, then driven from large tracts of its natural habitat by agricultural a...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisa...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural worl...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us int...
JOHN BURNSIDE

My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

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

I really like to try my hand at everything, and I think it's probably dangerous to let oneself b...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of j...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Growing up, I lived in a house without art: no picture books on the shelves, no visits to museums, n...
JOHN BURNSIDE

A forest - the word dates back to the Norman occupancy, when it meant an area set aside for England&...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I know that the only reason American landscapes sometimes disappoint me is that, just a century befo...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hour...
JOHN BURNSIDE

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

It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our l...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that where...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; p...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a long...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It's important to have quiet time and isolation.
JOHN BURNSIDE

That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and wood...
JOHN BURNSIDE

If you had to lose everything, what would you miss most? It wouldn't be anything gross, like the big...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For the Yupik, all life was continuous, animal with human with 'spirit', and recognising tha...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The Botanischer Garten in Berlin has one of Europe's finer winter trails, leading in careful ord...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I am in favor of a foreign policy that will cultivate relations of peace with all nations, and I wil...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

I am in favor of admitting any territory into the Union of States as soon as it has fulfilled the re...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

Being about to land on the soil of North Carolina, the general commanding desires his soldiers to re...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

Part of the plan is to move from processing and notification ... and have people go out and look for...
ALEC BURNSIDE

Having come down so hard on the commission already, it is possible the court will give them a break ...
ALEC BURNSIDE

The European Commission overreached itself in the G.E.-Honeywell case. It pushed theories like the '...
ALEC BURNSIDE

That's nonsense. American businesses need to wake up to the reality that there is a merger review pr...
ALEC BURNSIDE

The late brilliant actions in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas divided and weakened the enemy...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only wi...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The wastefulness of indiscriminate plunder impoverishes a country, while it adds nothing to the supp...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The commanding general publishes, for the information of all concerned, that hereafter all persons f...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

So many men have so many times predicted the time of the end of the Rebellion, and been mistaken, th...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

I am opposed to the wholesale giving away of the public lands to railroad corporations and other lik...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The general commanding congratulates his troops on their brilliant and successful occupation of Roan...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

We kind of became his parents for that time, and he was great to have in the home he followed all...
JOE BURNSIDE

He was here about a year before he moved in with me, and we were the sixth actual house he'd been in...
JOE BURNSIDE

I couldn't even understand her. I wasn't sure what she was saying to us. Here is a 19-year old girl ...
JOE BURNSIDE

My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of so...
JOHN OLIVER

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is al...
JOHN BERGER

No man is to be credited for his mere authority's sake, unless he can show Scripture for the mai...
JOHN WYCLIFFE

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Am...
JOHN ROBERTS

Human beings, we have dark sides; we have dark issues in our lives. To progress anywhere in life, yo...
JOHN NOBLE

Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in s...
DAYMOND JOHN

Being thrown into the fire and getting the thing turned around in a hurry made it more difficult. Th...
JOHN ELWAY

This Constitution was not made for a day, nor is it composed of such flexible materials as to be war...
JOHN TYLER

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
JOHN LENNON

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
JOHN MORTIMER

No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.
JOHN JAY

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
JOHN LOCKE

High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just ...
JOHN MAYER

When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn't b...
JOHN LEWIS

The documented incidences of voter fraud are very rare, yet throughout the country, forces have mobi...
JOHN LEWIS

Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the ...
JOHN CALVIN

I was introduced to the Turducken in New Orleans. And it wasn't Thanksgiving. Glenn at the Gourm...
JOHN MADDEN

Christians were instructed to serve others, and the thanksgiving was for the grace of God and the fa...
JOHN CLAYTON

Is it possible that the portrait of the divine Son of God is an exaggeration, at best, or a complete...
JOHN CLAYTON

Was the real Jesus of history one and the same as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New ...
JOHN CLAYTON

I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consis...
JOHN CLAYTON

Almost every time I am in a lectureship on a college campus, young people will say, If there is a Go...
JOHN CLAYTON

I guess none of us like to look back in our lives to a time when we made poor judgments and foolish ...
JOHN CLAYTON

In the surface of the paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as thickness.
JOHN CLAYTON

Why is it any more reasonable to believe that God has always been than it is to say that matter has ...
JOHN CLAYTON

What is the origin of God?
JOHN CLAYTON

The emphasis on the birth of Christ tends to polarize our pluralistic society and create legal and e...
JOHN CLAYTON

The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ, but in doing...
JOHN CLAYTON

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are t...
JOHN CLAYTON

There was no instruction to be thankful that the Christians were special people, chosen people. Ther...
JOHN CLAYTON

It is my fervent hope and prayer that by exposing my mistakes and by pointing out the things that we...
JOHN CLAYTON

We are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is re...
JOHN CLAYTON

The purpose of this study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God ...
JOHN CLAYTON

Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it f...
JOHN CLAYTON

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
JOHN BURROUGHS

You wouldn't do something for a receiver to catch the ball if the quarterback couldn't throw...
JOHN MADDEN

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'...
ELTON JOHN

The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male ...
JOHN LEGEND

I have learned in fashion to be a little savage.
JOHN FAIRCHILD

Perhaps they thought I was on a fact-finding mission, never for one moment thinking that a man of my...
JOHN PRESCOTT

My consultant keeps telling me sudden death could come at any moment.
JOHN TAVENER

As you grow older, you learn a few things. One of them is to actually take the time you've allot...
JOHN BATTELLE

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.
JOHN MUIR

Inherent in architecture, it involves everything in life so that there is absolutely no end to it. B...
JOHN LAUTNER

My folks always let me go to the movies every Saturday. We were really motion-picture goers.
JOHN WAYNE

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That's why I started in with the prop...
JOHN WAYNE

I've loved reading all my life.
JOHN WAYNE

Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly li...
JOHN WAYNE

I'd read up on the history of our country and I'd become fascinated with the story of the Al...
JOHN WAYNE

Get off your butt and join the Marines!
JOHN WAYNE

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that...
JOHN WAYNE

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity - and I don't mean simple - it&...
JOHN WAYNE

In westerns, you meet a hardy bunch of characters. There is no jealousy on such pictures.
JOHN WAYNE

I was sure I'd set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the ...
JOHN WAYNE

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers ...
JOHN WAYNE

All I'm for is the liberty of the individual.
JOHN WAYNE

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.
JOHN WAYNE

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I'm not going to do anything tha...
JOHN WAYNE

You learn a lot more from the lows because it makes you pay attention to what you're doing.
JOHN ELWAY

I've experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows. I think to really appreciate anything ...
JOHN ELWAY

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer ...
JOHN WOODEN

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't i...
JOHN LENNON

Take care, be kind, be considerate of other people and other species, and be loving.
JOHN LITHGOW

Buildings should serve people, not the other way around.
JOHN PORTMAN

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
JOHN DONNE

Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.
JOHN MCCARTHY

If you don't interfere with me, I'll always do something really good.
JOHN MALKOVICH

I think people took Grenada for what it turned out to be, which was a very specific incident and fro...
JOHN NEGROPONTE

Generalizations, like brooms, ought not to stand in a corner forever; they ought to sweep as a matte...
JOHN LUKACS

Well, if you're true to yourself you're going to be true to everyone else.
JOHN WOODEN

The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
JOHN MILTON

I'm not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: 'live-acy.' I'm more interested i...
JOHN GLENN

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shir...
JOHN HEYWOOD

Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.
JOHN HEYWOOD

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?
JOHN HEYWOOD

When all candles be out, all cats be grey.
JOHN HEYWOOD

Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.
JOHN CIARDI

It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad y...
JOHN CIARDI

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks ...
JOHN CIARDI

Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!
JOHN CIARDI

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
JOHN CIARDI

Poetry lies its way to the truth.
JOHN CIARDI

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
JOHN CIARDI

Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
JOHN CIARDI

The day will happen whether or not you get up.
JOHN CIARDI

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
JOHN CIARDI

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they hav...
JOHN CIARDI

The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.
JOHN CIARDI

With any of the movies I've had a chance to do, or any of the TV shows I've had a chance to ...
JOHN CENA

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undi...
JOHN CHEEVER

Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.
JOHN WEBSTER

Old friends are best.
JOHN SELDEN

They say stay in the lines, but there's always something better on the other side.
JOHN MAYER

Rome was not built in one day.
JOHN HEYWOOD

You win by working hard, making tough decisions and building coalitions.
JOHN ENGLER

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the ...
JOHN MCGAHERN

The last thing on my mind was to be an actor, but I had a crush on a cute girl in the drama departme...
JOHN RATZENBERGER

He who laughs most, learns best.
JOHN CLEESE

Some people feel fulfillment from a bitter end - it gives them some sort of sense of reality. But, w...
JOHN BOYEGA

I've never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.
JOHN MADDEN

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.
JOHN WOODEN

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
JOHN WOODEN

Just try to be the best you can be; never cease trying to be the best you can be. That's in your...
JOHN WOODEN

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
JOHN WOODEN

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
JOHN WOODEN

Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
JOHN LOCKE

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all...
JOHN LOCKE

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the tr...
JOHN LOCKE

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
JOHN LOCKE

It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a ...
JOHN LENNON

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people cal...
JOHN LENNON

I believe time wounds all heels.
JOHN LENNON

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. I...
JOHN LENNON

When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have...
JOHN LENNON

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, th...
JOHN LENNON

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always...
JOHN LENNON

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!
JOHN LENNON

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
JOHN LENNON

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptat...
JOHN LOCKE

In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community...
JOHN THORN

I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to ...
JOHN BARROWMAN

You have to keep persevering. An actor goes to a lot of auditions and doesn't get the part.
JOHN MCENROE

Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depress...
JOHN MELLENCAMP

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.
JOHN LUBBOCK

So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying ...
JOHN WILLIAMS

Remaining childish is a tremendous state of innocence.
JOHN LYDON

There's rock n' roll in hip-hop, there's rock n' roll in pop music, there's rock...
JOHN VARVATOS

What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gravity is not just a limitation, but also a possible partner in an intriguing, potentially joyful game.

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John Burnside

What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gravity is not just a limitation, but also a possible partner in an intriguing, potentially joyful game.

John Burnside

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