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"The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture."
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"You can't trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can't trust you."

"Look, he said, "the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best, or just expect the worst.If you expect the worst, you're never disappointed, I pointed out.Yeah, but who lives like that?"

"It is not something you can tell by looking at a person, but trust is always being increased or decreased as you interact with a person."

"All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.Yessir.But there aint but one reason.Yessir.You know what it is?No sir.It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be."

"Wherever you will go, I will let you down, But this lullaby goes on."

"People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things."

"Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter."
Explore more quotes by Ian Hamilton Finlay


"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."


"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."


"Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different."


"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."


"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."


"No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural."


"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time."


"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."


"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."


"I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera."
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