68 Quotes by Norman MacCaig

And it’s impossible for me to read Henry James.

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.

I never think about poetry except when I’m writing it. I mean my poetry.

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.

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

I don’t think of myself all the time.

But you’d have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

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.

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.