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The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

Seamus Heaney

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
The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Complete Crisis Intimate Isolation Poetry
In the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Learning Poem Poetry Quite Student Workshop
Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Achievement Hard Poetry Serious Worth
There’s never going to be a united Ireland, you know.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Country Known Unity Yourself
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.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Home Myself Reading Time
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Risk Truth World Yourself
The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Hurt Murder Myself Soul
The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Empowerment Expectation Forget Gift Writing Yourself
I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Myself Writing
My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Children Father Mom Myself
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins – I liked other poems… but Hopkins was kind of electric for me – he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intense Language Myself Poem Reading Talk Thinking
Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Born Optimistic
I don’t think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intelligence Natural Politics Thinking
I’m a firm believer in learning by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Heart Learning
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Childhood Disappointment Preparation Thinking

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

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The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes