"I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out"
About this Quote
The line is bracing in its simplicity: keep what you love, reject what you do not. It treats books not as relics to be revered, but as living companions whose presence must be earned. There is an unapologetic rigor in that stance, a refusal to sentimentalize the shelf. Rather than hoard the trappings of culture, the speaker asks literature to prove its value by the standard that matters most in a reader’s life: delight, nourishment, lasting engagement.
Such selectivity echoes Norman MacCaig’s poetic temperament. His verse is famed for clarity, economy, and an exactness that resists clutter. He pares images to their essentials; unnecessary ornament falls away. This remark mirrors that ethic in the realm of reading. A personal library, by this measure, becomes an extension of taste and craft, a distillation of experience rather than an archive of obligations. To throw out a book is not an act of vandalism but an assertion that attention is finite, and that attention deserves protection.
The phrase also carries a dry, Highland wit. It is both serious and lightly irreverent, poking at the piety that often envelops books. MacCaig suggests that honor belongs not to the object but to the encounter it enables. A book that fails to move, challenge, or delight is not a neutral presence; it takes up space in the mind as well as on the shelf. Keeping only what one likes very much creates room for rereading, for deepening conversations with the works that shape one’s sensibility.
There is a quiet ethic of freedom here. Reading becomes an elective practice, guided by love rather than duty, by curiosity rather than anxiety about what one ought to have read. It invites a more intimate and rigorous relationship with language, one where the library is lean, the standards high, and the pleasures unembarrassed.
Such selectivity echoes Norman MacCaig’s poetic temperament. His verse is famed for clarity, economy, and an exactness that resists clutter. He pares images to their essentials; unnecessary ornament falls away. This remark mirrors that ethic in the realm of reading. A personal library, by this measure, becomes an extension of taste and craft, a distillation of experience rather than an archive of obligations. To throw out a book is not an act of vandalism but an assertion that attention is finite, and that attention deserves protection.
The phrase also carries a dry, Highland wit. It is both serious and lightly irreverent, poking at the piety that often envelops books. MacCaig suggests that honor belongs not to the object but to the encounter it enables. A book that fails to move, challenge, or delight is not a neutral presence; it takes up space in the mind as well as on the shelf. Keeping only what one likes very much creates room for rereading, for deepening conversations with the works that shape one’s sensibility.
There is a quiet ethic of freedom here. Reading becomes an elective practice, guided by love rather than duty, by curiosity rather than anxiety about what one ought to have read. It invites a more intimate and rigorous relationship with language, one where the library is lean, the standards high, and the pleasures unembarrassed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
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