Norman MacCaig Quotes

He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.

I haven't written for a few days, because I wanted first of all to think about my diary. It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I-nor for that matter anyone else-will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen -year -old schoolgirl. Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

I'm not one of those people who writes long soliloquies.

I have so much to talk about. I have so much to share. There are so many different emotions going on inside of me right now.

If you meet me, you might not get to know me. If you hear my music? You'll get to know me.

What was it about Carolyn that made her so cautious about revealing herself?

What people think in their heart gets out, no matter how much they try to hide it.

I'm the least animated person I know. Even on stage, I just walk across it.

Writing on 'Love' is so steeped in self-analysis. The writer's room can feel like therapy.

I believe everything is autobiographical. If it's not strictly about you, it's your peers, your obsessions, things that make you angry, or things that you've been watching or obsessing about. Preoccupying you for reasons you don't necessarily know, but it's about you. It says a lot about you. It's like when someone tells you their dream and you sit there going, "Do you realize how much you're revealing about yourself right now?" It's kind of embarrassing.

I’ve always known that there’s more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn’t regret that he isn’t more fully understood?

It's a hard thing to examine and difficult to speak for other writers, but when I look at my own writing there is often too much reticence. And that's a flaw I have as a person as well. I'm too reticent. I'm non-confrontational to a fault. And I'm risk-averse, which probably shows in my sentences. The aversion to long lines, the tendency to strip things back and be spare. My writing is an act of erasure that's tied up with my personality. I can easily produce a ninety thousand word chunk of writing and then cut back and back until I've only got ten thousand words. Or nothing.

An Englishman never takes his collar off when he is writing. How can you expect him to show you his soul?

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.

Somebody said, "Well, you're going to write your definitive book about your life, biography." No, I'm not. I haven't done that. I wrote a book of letters which gives an insight into the real me as opposed to the public perceptions of me. But I'm convinced historians will figure out the things we got wrong and hopefully the things we got right.

It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately.

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.

I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that's why I started writing. At least on paper I could put down what I thought.