Quotes from Simon Barnes

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world

The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.

Sport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty

I don't go birdwatching. I am birdwatching. Birdwatching is a state of being, not an activity. It doesn't depend on place, on equipment, on specific purpose, like, say, fishing. It is not a matter of organic trainspotting; it is about life and it is about living.

The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.

Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is.

We share a common ancestor with chimps that is not shared by mandrills, we share a common ancestor with mandrills that is not shared by bushbabies, and on and on and on, to the ancestor we share with nematode worms that is not shared with oak trees.

We're not just losing the wild world. We're forgetting it. We're no longer noticing it. We've lost the habit of looking and seeing and listening and hearing. We're beginning to think it's not really our business. We're beginning to act as if it's not there any more.

I am a bad birdwatcher. On the other hand, and taking one thing with another, when it comes to enjoying birds I am world-class.

We can't distinguish between male and female blue tits by sight: blue tits can because the male possesses an ultraviolet crest. Such a bird would find our three-coloured televisions incomprehensibly drab.)

Persuading your brain to become a little wilder is like trying to persuade a starving man to take a snack.

THE MAGIC TREE Everyone in that crowd turned its head, and then everyone drew a long breath of wonder and delight. A little way off, towering over their heads, they saw a tree which certainly had not been there before. – The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis

The wildness that comes in the waiting. In the sitting.

There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world."