Quote

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

Norman MacCaig

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Norman MacCaig
Age: 85 †
Born: 1910
Born: November 14
Died: 1996
Died: January 23
Poet
Edinburgh
Scotland
Norman Alexander MacCaig
Also
Wells
Well
Mimicry
Powers
Invention
Literature

More quotes by Norman MacCaig

Image
Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
Norman MacCaig
Image
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.
Norman MacCaig
Image
I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
Norman MacCaig
Image
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
Image
If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.
Norman MacCaig
Image
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
Image
I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
Norman MacCaig
Image
I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.
Norman MacCaig
Image
When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.
Norman MacCaig
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't think of myself all the time.
Norman MacCaig
Image
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
Image
And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
Norman MacCaig
Image
When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
Norman MacCaig