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Authors:
Norman MacCaig Quotes

Norman MacCaig quotes

Scottish Poet November 14, 1910 – January 23, 1996

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Quotes

If. If your hand came, dead in the dead of night, And touched my forehead, waking me to see. You standing dead there in the dead of night, I who fear ghosts would have no fear at all. I'd greet you with the tenderest hello. And you would smile, though sad. And then you'd go. There would be nothing deathly in your death. For your love always was the laughing sort. That quickened life and would not die with death. And when you'd gone, I would not want to weep -- That loving gaiety would still... 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! Norman MacCaig
Norman MacCaig quote: "I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the..."
I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century. 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
Norman MacCaig quote: "I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own."
I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own. 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
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
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
Norman MacCaig quote: "Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away."
Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away. Norman MacCaig
Norman MacCaig quote: "I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not..."
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
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
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
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
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
Norman MacCaig quote: "I don't think of myself all the time."
I don't think of myself all the time. Norman MacCaig

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