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.

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!

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.

I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.

If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.

I don't think of myself all the time.