Norman MacCaig Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, Misunderstood, Literature

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

  Norman MacCaig

  People, Literature, Want

• 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

• I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

• 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

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Book, Literature

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Light, Literature, Chuck

• 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

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Literature, Mimicry, Invention

• 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

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Boys, Great Love, Literature

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Sex, Character, Play

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Literature, Impossible

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Years, Literature, American Poetry

• 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

• 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

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Long, People, Literature

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Thinking, Literature, Taught

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

  Norman MacCaig

  Men, Thinking, Voice

• But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

  Norman MacCaig

  Jobs, Literature, Persons

• 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

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