68 Quotes by Norman MacCaig

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

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

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.

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.

Anybody who writes doesn’t like to be misunderstood.

I don’t care whether a book is a first edition or not. I’m not a bibliophile in that word’s natural sense.

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.

I just didn’t want to shoot other people.

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.