Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Poetry stands or falls by its music.
It's important to have quiet time and isolation.
The older I get, the happier my childhood becomes.
My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.
Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.
I'm an insomniac, so my perfect reader is probably another insomniac.
Once upon a time, forests were repositories of magic for the human race.
I'm interested in the way language is used to navigate the world around us.
My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
For 10 years, I gave away my possessions every year and moved on to a new place.
'The Gardener' is more than a marvellous collection of images by a master photographer.
If nature offers no home, then we must make a home one way or another. The only question is how.
I remember playing the Mad Hatter in a school play and feeling very comfortable in the character.
With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.
What we should be doing is saving habitats, not single species, no matter what their cuteness factor.
It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our lives.
One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890.
Our ancestors went to the woods to find fuel; they set snares there for birds and gathered nuts and fungi.
The fabric of a garden is determined as much by its textures as by its tonal range and architectural flair.
My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.
As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.
I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.
Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.
I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak.
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.
I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever.
The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.
'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to moving to my old home area of Fife.
I don't like the term 'mental illness.' I'd rather just say 'mad.' Just like I always say 'loony bin,' not 'mental hospital.'
'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.
As attractive as it is, the idea that nature can exist beyond our dangerous 'instinct for happiness' is never the whole story.
Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural world's most elegant phenomena.
My father was this big, tough guy, almost heroic in proportion to me as a child. It was only later that I saw how fearful he was.
Growing up, I lived in a house without art: no picture books on the shelves, no visits to museums, no posters on the bedroom wall.
I think humans have to learn a new way of dwelling on this earth. A way of living with their companions: animals, plants and fish.
Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of jobs were lost as pits were shut down.
Sometimes, when the wind hits hard and icicles form on the sea cliffs, we can all come together - and at those times, we are at our best.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
All my life, I have been a celebrant of Halloween. For me, it is the most important day of the year, the turning point in the old pagan calendar.
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.
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.
Usually, I would mistrust a book if it took that long to write. Usually, if it isn't done in two years, I suspect there's something wrong and throw it away.
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.
With fiction, I tend to get to my desk and start writing. Poetry I write in my head, often while walking, so that my poems have an organic quality, hopefully.
I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; perhaps they think wildness could work only in a larger space.
I remember when I first encountered anthropocentrism. I was in primary school and, in preparation for our confirmation, the class was learning about the afterlife.
I really like to try my hand at everything, and I think it's probably dangerous to let oneself be pigeon-holed, not necessarily by other people, but in one's own mind.