Norman MacCaig quotes

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century. (Norman MacCaig)
I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
Norman MacCaig
When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.
Norman MacCaig
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
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
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
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
When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.
Norman MacCaig
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
Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
Norman MacCaig
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)
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
I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.
Norman MacCaig
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
I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
Norman MacCaig
If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.
Norman MacCaig
People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.
Norman MacCaig
And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
Norman MacCaig
I don't think of myself all the time.
Norman MacCaig
I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.
Norman MacCaig
I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry. (Norman MacCaig)
Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away.
Norman MacCaig
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
When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
Norman MacCaig
And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.
Norman MacCaig