Search quotes by author:    A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 


Norman Maccaig Quotes


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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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