I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEYI think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
More Seamus Heaney Quotes
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It’s difficult to learn poems off by heart that don’t rhyme.
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The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
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At home in Ireland, there’s a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
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You yourself don’t have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.
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I’m a firm believer in learning by heart.
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In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
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What I’ve said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
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The amount of sensory material stored up or stored down in the brain’s and the body’s systems is inestimable. It’s like a culture at the bottom of a jar, although it doesn’t grow, I think, or help anything else to grow unless you find a way to reach it and touch it.
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Your temperament is what you write with, but it’s also how you deal with the world.
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I don’t do as many readings as I used to. There was a time when I was on the road a lot more, at home in Ireland, in Britain, in Canada and the States, a time when I had more stamina and appetite for it.
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We go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves.
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I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.
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I came from a farming background, and my career was teaching.
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Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.
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Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
SEAMUS HEANEY