“Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think...” — John Burnside Quote

“Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my first love. At fifteen, she was tall, slender, very dark: an intelligent, sly girl possessed of what I think of now, though I didn't think of then, as a kind of debatable beauty.”

“I'm an insomniac, so my perfect reader is probably another insomniac.”

“The conventional, and painfully artificial, separation of the human realm from the natural other is bound to perish, albeit over a period of time, until we are obliged to learn how to cultivate our gardens under the most demanding conditions.”

“Whether the Constitution allows indictment of a sitting president is debatable.”

“Obviously, we're all going to die at some point. Whether or not we are fated to die in some way I think is debatable. I just don't know which side to debate.”

“To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much.”