Alistair Macleod Quotes

#1. Measure twice; cut once.

Alistair MacLeod

#2. I want to change the world and I used to think I needed to do some big, significant thing. More recently I see this can be accomplished one relationship at a time.

Oliver Thomas

#3. If on the quantum level, matter is revealed to be less solid and definable than it appears, then it seems to me that science is coming closer to the Buddhist contemplative insights of emptiness and interdependence.

Dalai Lama XIV

#4. Perhaps it is better to have a place to go to that you hate than to have no place at all.

Alistair MacLeod

#5. The dust will not settle in our time. And when it does some great roaring machine will come and whirl it all skyhigh again.

Samuel Beckett

#6. If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

Alistair MacLeod

#7. I don't have many sad days.

Billy Graham

#8. No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived.

Alistair MacLeod

#9. I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.

Alistair MacLeod

#10. All of us are better when we're loved.

Alistair MacLeod

#11. Writers write about what worries them.

Alistair MacLeod

#12. A Fiddle for Angus is a charming tale. This is a very fine book.

Alistair MacLeod

#13. Whenever I learn a new word, I feel strong, for I discover a new world.
Whenever I share a word, I feel weak: I give away a sparkle of my dreams. (Soar)

Soar

#14. Be yourself, be who you can be.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#15. Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don't think that should be there.

Alistair MacLeod

#16. There is a kind of belief among my students that things that are true are interesting. But most things that are true are not interesting. Four pages describing how I got up and brushed my teeth in the morning would kill you.

Alistair MacLeod

#17. He, who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his hand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#18. And then there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations.

Alistair MacLeod