Alistair MacLeod Quotes

Alistair MacLeod — Canadian Author born on July 20, 1936,

Alistair MacLeod, OC FRSC was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and academic. His powerful and moving stories vividly evoke the beauty of Cape Breton Island's rugged landscape and the resilient character of many of its inhabitants, the descendants of Scottish immigrants, who are haunted by ancestral memories and who struggle to reconcile the past and the present. MacLeod has been praised for his verbal precision, his lyric intensity and his use of simple, direct language that seems rooted in an oral tradition... (wikipedia)

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

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.

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

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.