7 Quotes & Sayings By Hugo Hamilton

Hugo Hamilton was born in 1924 in Scotland. He studied electrical engineering at Glasgow University and later joined the Royal Air Force. He became an electronics engineer, working on radar systems during the second world war. During that time he also began to write poems and short stories Read more

After the war he became interested in spiritualism, and in 1952 published his first book, The World of Wicca, which was an instant success. He went on to publish many other books on spirituality, including The Book of Taliesyn (1955), The Book of Baleful Glamour (1962), The Book of Shadow Magic (1974), The Book of William Blake (1974), The Book of Faery Magick (1973), The Book of Elphame (1978) and Divination with Runes (1976). He also wrote two novels, The Aethyr and Fledgling, and a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography.

He died in 1978.

1
Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me. Hugo Hamilton
2
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off.... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. Hugo Hamilton
3
Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character. Hugo Hamilton
4
-Nobody can force you to smile, she says. -What? I ask. But I know she's not even talking to me, only to herself, as if she's the last person left in the room. -They can make you show your teeth, but what good is that? Nobody can make you smile against your will. Hugo Hamilton
5
One day, my father said there was nothing outside infinity. He said the universe was like a cardboard box with God sitting outside surrounded by light, but I wanted to know if maybe God was sitting inside another cardboard box with the light on, and how could anyone be sure how many cardboard boxes there are. Hugo Hamilton
6
He said you have to be on the side of the losers, the people with bad lungs. You have to be with those who are homesick and can't breathe very well in Ireland. He said it makes no sense to hold a stone in your hand. A lot more people would be homeless if you speak the killer language. He said Ireland has more than one story. We are the German-Irish story. We are the English-Irish story, too. My father has one soft foot and one hard foot, one good ear and one bad ear, and we have one Irish foot and one German foot and a right arm in English. We are the brack children. Brack, homemade Irish bread with German raisins. We are the brack people and we don't have just one language and one history. We sleep in German and we dream in Irish. We laugh in Irish and we cry in German. We are silent in German and we speak in English. We are the speckled people. Hugo Hamilton