Ian Hamilton Finlay famous quotes

03-18-2025

Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Garden #Retreat #Certain
The present order is the disorder of the future.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Order #Disorder
I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Garden #People #Collaboration
However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Thinking #Trying #World
If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Mean #Thinking #People
No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Order #People #Expectations
But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Ideas #Chance #Concrete
But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Writing #Muse #Given
For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Feelings #Way #Language
As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Writing #Friendly #Sometimes
But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Artist #Marijuana #Opinion
I am not a modern man, I am just a wee old fashioned one.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Marijuana #Men #Modern
People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#People #Challenges #Annoying
I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Past #Trying #Different
Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Garden #Thinking #Sparta
My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Garden #Law #World
What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.
-- Ian Hamilton Finlay

#Tree #Events #Stones

You may also like:

Alasdair Gray
Writer
Alexander Stoddart
Camille Desmoulins
French Politician
Carol Ann Duffy
Poet
Edwin Morgan
Poet
Georges Danton
Political figure
Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
Historian
Hugh MacDiarmid
Poet
J. M. W. Turner
Painter
Jackie Kay
Poet
Lawrence Weiner
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Political leader
Maximilien Robespierre
Lawyer
Norman MacCaig
Poet
Robert Creeley
Poet
William Carlos Williams
Poet