Jim Crace Quotes

Because I'm a walker, natural history is my subject; I've always been obsessed with landscape, and I have an elegiac tone in most of my books.

Henry David Thoreau was an oddball job quitter and ne'er-do-well who evolved into the bearded sage of literature, natural history, and civil liberties.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

If I had a choice as to my perfect career, I would make a couple of films a year and then concentrate on natural history.

I'm a nature bug.

There is little history in the study of nature, and there is little nature in the study of history.

Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love.

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

I have a certain pool of subject matter that I like to write about, things that interest me: politics, religion, ecology, and relationships between men and women. And that's usually what I focus on.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion.

I decided that my means were sufficient to enable me to devote myself to botany, a determination which I never, during the long period of my subsequent career, had on any occasion any reason to repent of.

I'm constantly investigating nature - nature, meaning everything.

Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.

I've always liked Muir without knowing quite why.

As a child, I remember my own intensive interest in biology, birds, other animals and flowers and was determined at an early age to become a scientist.

When I'm off the clock, I usually play video games - or do something nature-y so I can contribute to Mother Nature.

Discovering new species is a passion. A day without collecting plants is painful for me.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

The great task for environmental historians is to record and analyze the effects of man's recently achieved control over the natural world. What is needed is a longer-term global, comparative, historical perspective that treats the environment as a meaningful variable.

I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

At one point, I wanted to be a wildlife photographer. I also love to travel, so maybe I'd do travel writing.

I have a great love for nature. That must have started somewhere down back home, I think, because my family own one of the better known gardens in Soochow, so I played there, and I lived there, and so I must have absorbed something there. So I continue to have a great interest in nature.

For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words.