I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.
Norman MacCaig

I don't think of myself all the time.
Norman MacCaig

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
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

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

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

People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.
Norman MacCaig

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