John Burnside Quotes

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I'm a work in progress.

My first book was the book that changed my life.

Reading has made me more open, has improved my understanding, and has made me a better artiste, but it also makes me live in my own bubble. My mom keeps asking me, 'What do you read in that room the whole day?' Once I am into a book, I will finish it.

I really have lived in books. Books are friends. They are some of the friends that make you who you are.

It's possible of course, especially when you're young, to read a book and take it to your heart. And you don't need to speak to anybody about it - it's so important to you: You have found it.

I can't pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.

I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors.

One day at my grandmother's house, I discovered 'The Secret Garden' and read it. This was the first book I found entirely for myself, and I cherished it.

Books guided my life from high school, and the greatest, most interesting, most provocative, funniest, smartest people who ever lived in the last 200 or 300 years wrote those books. I would fall in love with Victor Hugo and read not just 'Les Miserables,' but 'Bug-Jargal' and 'The Toilers of the Sea' and so forth.

I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell.

Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world.

I have always loved 'Stig of the Dump.' I think reading that book made me officially realise that I was a reader.

I read 'The Hobbit' only when I was an adult. I had a lot of friends, teenagers, who discovered reading through 'The Hobbit,' but it wasn't something that I discovered until later in life.

I think once you sort of cross over and you realize what books can be - and if they mean something to you - there's just no stopping you.

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

College inspired me to think differently. It's like no other time in your life.

People don't see this side of me. They don't know I read, like, 800 million spiritual books. Lately I am just really getting into a lot of spirituality.

That's like the greatest experiences of my life still, 'Friends,' so it's not something I want to get away from, but I do want to try and show something new.

I read John Irving's novel 'The World According To Garp' when I was about 14 or 15. It was the first grown-up book that I had read. It is the story of a young man who grows up to be a novelist. I finished it, and I wanted to write a book that made the reader feel the way I felt at the end of that, which was sort of both bereft and elated.

I mark the reading of 'Look Homeward, Angel' as one of the pivotal events of my life. It starts off with the single greatest, knock-your-socks-off first page I have ever come across in my careful reading of world literature.

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn't. In fact, I didn't even know you were supposed to have one.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.