32+ Norman MacCaig Quotes On Education, Observant And Lyrical

Norman MacCaig was a Scottish poet who wrote in both English and Scots. He was born in Edinburgh in 1910 and died in 1996. He wrote about everyday life and the natural world, often drawing on his own experiences of both. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Norman MacCaig on life, leadership, education.

Top 10 Norman MacCaig Quotes

1. I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
2. 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!
3. When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. I just didn't want to shoot other people.

Norman MacCaig Short Quotes

• People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.
• I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
• I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.
• I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.
• I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.
• I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.
• And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
• And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.
• 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.

Norman MacCaig Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me. — Norman MacCaig

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood. — Norman MacCaig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life Lessons by Norman MacCaig

1. Norman MacCaig's work encourages readers to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and the importance of spending time in nature.
2. His poems often explore the themes of mortality and the passing of time, reminding us to make the most of our lives.
3. MacCaig's work also encourages readers to reflect on their own experiences and emotions, and to think deeply about the world around them.