Best 31 quotes of Norman Maccaig on MyQuotes

Norman Maccaig

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

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

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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!

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

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

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    Norman Maccaig

    If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

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

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

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    Norman Maccaig

    I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

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    Norman Maccaig

    I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

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

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    Norman Maccaig

    When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.

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    Norman Maccaig

    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.

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    Norman Maccaig

    I think these movements and become them, here, In this room's stillness, none of them about, And relish them all-until I think of where Thrashed by a crook, the cursive adder writes Quick V's and Q's in the dust and rubs them out. from "Movements

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    Norman Maccaig

    I will not feel, I will not feel, until I have to

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    Norman Maccaig

    Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

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    Norman Maccaig

    Self under self, a pile of selves I stand Threaded on time, and with metaphysic hand Lift the farm like a lid and see Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.