Norman MacCaig Quotes

Quotes about:

• When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.

  Norman MacCaig

  Fishing, Miles, Five

  41 Copy quote

• I learned words, I learned words; but half of them
  died from lack of exercise. And the ones I use
  often look at me
  with a look that whispers, Liar.

  Norman MacCaig

  Liars, Exercise, Looks

  Norman MacCaig (2013). “The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig”, p.13, Birlinn

  2 Copy quote

• However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

  Norman MacCaig

  Offering, Bird, Literature

  53 Copy quote

• I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

  Norman MacCaig

  Nature, Love Is, Hills

  84 Copy quote

• Landscape is my religion. ...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches And floored with a skin of water.

  Norman MacCaig

  Water, Skins, Caves

  0 Copy quote

• It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.

  Norman MacCaig

  Breathing, Literature, Conversation

  4 Copy quote

• All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, People, Literature

  0 Copy quote

• And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

  Norman MacCaig

  Thinking, Literature, Taught

  5 Copy quote

• There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

  Norman MacCaig

  Book, Years, Twenties

  3 Copy quote

• And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

  Norman MacCaig

  Eye, Thinking, Names

  0 Copy quote

• And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.

  Norman MacCaig

  Literature, Impossible

  0 Copy quote

• And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

  Norman MacCaig

  Passion, Years, Literature

  0 Copy quote

• A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

  Norman MacCaig

  Eight, Years, Dying

  2 Copy quote

• Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thump. And that's not the only reason.

  Norman MacCaig

  Men, Fishing, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

  Norman MacCaig

  Book, Fishing, Sides

  4 Copy quote

• I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.

  Norman MacCaig

  Rivers, Fish Tanks, Borders

  15 Copy quote

• I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.

  Norman MacCaig

  Book, Literature, Care

  1 Copy quote

• When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

  Norman MacCaig

  Teacher, Book, Paper

  3 Copy quote

• Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, Misunderstood, Literature

  0 Copy quote

• When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

  Norman MacCaig

  Edinburgh, Ridiculous, Euthanasia

  12 Copy quote

• I just didn't want to shoot other people.

  Norman MacCaig

  People, Literature, Want

  0 Copy quote

• In some ways I'm a reticent man, and for quite a number of years there wasn't very much of my real true deep feelings in my writing.

  Norman MacCaig

  Real, Writing, Men

  0 Copy quote

• Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away.

  Norman MacCaig

  Light, Literature, Chuck

  2 Copy quote

• But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!

  Norman MacCaig

  True Love, Nice, Book

  48 Copy quote

• In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Thinking, People, Literature

  0 Copy quote

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