Norman MacCaig Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.
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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.
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Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
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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.
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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.
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I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.