Norman MacCaig Quotes

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year!

I keep an ongoing list of my fifty favorite books, which I recalibrate whenever I discover a new one that seems to demand a spot there.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

I don't collect books just because other people collect them, and I'm not going to have books in my collection if I think it's badly written.

I don't give books as gifts. Books are extremely personal, and I would hate to give someone a book that they don't like or want, because it would break my heart if they didn't read it.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will.

I must have books everywhere. They're the soul of a room-they reveal the taste, the interests, and the secrets of whoever lives there.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

There is a logic [to my reading], but I can't define it. I like reading impulsively. I collect books, I have a lot of them, but most of them I have not read yet. I'll read them when they call me from the shelf.

My whole thing is, I collect what I know I want to read, and I have certain bookshelves in my bedroom that contain all the books I haven't read yet.

If I like a book, I tend to read the author's entire collection. But I choose mainly through personal recommendations, general word of mouth and book reviews.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Many things embarrass me, but reading isn't one of them. I'm not ashamed of my slightly weird collection of prison memoirs. Nor the flaky meditation books. After all, I can pretend I never read those.

I am a voracious reader, so it's difficult for me to give a list of my favourite authors of all time.

I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot, but I'm a sucker for humor and strangeness.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life.

I'm not that into reading. If I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read some cool sci-fi book or something, not some stupid self-help book.

There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by.

I haven't read hardly any Westerns, to tell you the truth.

When I was a boy, all the books I owned fit on a single shelf. Now I have several thousand stacked around the house.