Quotes by Norman Maccaig - Page 1

I don't think of myself all the time.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
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I just didn't want to shoot other people.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Literature
People
Want
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I find it's impossible for me to read Proust.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Impossible
Proust
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And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Impossible
Literature
James
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Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Chuck
Light
Literature
Traveller
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Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Literature
Misunderstood
Writing
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I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Nature
Gregarious
Hills
Love Is
My Own
Love Own My Own
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And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Literature
Taught
Thinking
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I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Book
Literature
Otherwise
Throw
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I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
American Poetry
Literature
Years
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I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Mean
Thinking
Writing
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When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Fishing
Five
Miles
Me Nobody Know
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I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Invention
Literature
Mimicry
Powers
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And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Produce
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I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Boys
Great Love
Literature
Last Century
Tolstoy
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People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Literature
Long
People
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When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Men
Thinking
Voice
Presence
Speaking
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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 / Poet
Borders
Fish Tanks
Rivers
Shot
Border
Fish
Nowadays
Queue
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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 / Poet
Book
Care
Don't Care
Literature
Natural
Edition
Word
Sense
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If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Character
Play
Sex
Regardless
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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 / Poet
Jobs
Literature
Persons
Influenced
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When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
Norman Maccaig / Poet
Edinburgh
Euthanasia
Residence
Ridiculous
Teach
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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 / Poet
Men
Real
Writing
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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 / Poet
True Love
Book
Nice
Thinking
Hang
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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 / Poet
Literature
People
Writing
Me Better People
Likely
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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 / Poet
Closest
Dying
Eight
Ten
Years
Ten Years
Terrible Thing
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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 / Poet
Exercise
Liars
Looks
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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 / Poet
Teacher
Admire
Book
Classroom
Paper
Papers
Teachers
Books
Desk
Whatever
Lay
Whereas
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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 / Poet
Bird
Literature
Offering
Student
Offer
Young Person
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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 / Poet
Lasts
Literature
Passion
Years
Great Me Sometimes
Passions
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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 / Poet
Men
Bother
Fishing
Hesitation
Literature
Love Men Myself
Fish
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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 / Poet
Breathing
Conversation
Literature
Me Person Who
Rarely
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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 / Poet
Book
Twenties
Years
Twenty
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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 / Poet
Caves
Skins
Water
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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 / Poet
Affection
Book
Enjoyed
Fishing
Prose
Sides
Authors
Whom
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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 / Poet
Dry
Eye
Names
Speakers
Thinking
Page
Poets
Reads
Whom
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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 / Poet
Literature
Moved
People
Thinking
Absolute
Poetry Me People
Charles
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Norman Maccaig Quotes - Page 1

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