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I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

Seamus Heaney

In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poetry Translation
My experience is that prose usually equals duty – last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Equal Evidence Experience Writing
I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intelligence Natural Politics Thinking
Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Forever Life
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Childhood Disappointment Preparation Thinking
What I’ve said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Better Famous Myself Talk
The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deep Fake Feeling Imagination Sin
The group of writers I had grown up with in the ’60s – Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, John Hewitt, Paul Muldoon – formed a very necessary and self-sustaining group.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Group Necessary Sustainable Writing
The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Expectation Experiment Myself Poetry Reason
I’ve been in the habit of helping people.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Habit Help Myself People
When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Academy Foundation Mindset Myself Name
The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Hurt Murder Myself Soul
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Help Imagination Myself
Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Command Move Success
The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poet World
A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Caution Natural Person

I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

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I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

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