History says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave.’
SEAMUS HEANEYHistory says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave.’
SEAMUS HEANEYAnyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
SEAMUS HEANEYI don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.
SEAMUS HEANEYIn a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
SEAMUS HEANEYI’m not personally obsessed with death. At a certain age, the light that you live in is inhabited by the shades – it ’tis.
SEAMUS HEANEYPoetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
SEAMUS HEANEYI have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
SEAMUS HEANEYI think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
SEAMUS HEANEYIn a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.
SEAMUS HEANEYYou yourself don’t have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.
SEAMUS HEANEYDylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.
SEAMUS HEANEYIn my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work – the hay in the summertime, for example.
SEAMUS HEANEYWrite whatever you like!
SEAMUS HEANEYI spend almost every morning with mail.
SEAMUS HEANEYThere is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
SEAMUS HEANEYI think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY