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“O were my love yon Lilac
fair,
Wi' purple blossoms to
the Spring,
And I, a bird to shelter
there,
When wearied on my little
wing!
How I wad mourn when it
was torn
By Autumn wild, and
Winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton
wing,
When youthfu' May its
bloom renew'd.”—Scottish Romantic poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), “O Were My
Love Yon Lilac Fair” (1793), in The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (2000)
(I came upon this poem on
an episode of Parks and Recreation, in which Ron Swanson—sitting on a
gloriously green hillside in Scotland—reads this poem and is unexpectedly moved
to tears.)
“People assume that writers are terribly insightful
and good at being with or reading other people. But the people we portray are,
of course, people we made up and therefore very accessible to us. We hopefully
make mankind our study and gain benefits from that. We are also human beings
who spend huge amounts of time alone, obsessed by the fruits of our own
control-freakery. So our research into humanity may make us smart about certain
things, but if you get us on a bad day we may not notice if you’re on fire.
(When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’)” — Scottish writer and stand-up comedian A.L.
Kennedy quoted in Claire Cameron, “Claire Cameron Interviews A.L. Kennedy: ‘Marry Someone Who Makes You Laugh,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 11,
2014
