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The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God’s sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.

Seamus Heaney

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
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Grow Manifestation Order Poetry Store
Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Break Death Poetry
Your temperament is what you write with, but it’s also how you deal with the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deal Temperature World Writing
I feel myself part of something. Not only being part of a community but part of an actual moment and a movement of Irish writing and art. That sense of being part of the whole thing is the deepest joy.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Community Deep Feeling Joy Moments Myself
I suppose you inevitably fall into habits of expression.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Expression Fall Habit Myself
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mystery Poetry Relationship Slight
Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Big Listening Myself Speaker
In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poetry Promotion
Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Achievement Hard Poetry Serious Worth
I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Myself Possible Space Walk
We go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Literature Ourselves Poetry
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Childhood Disappointment Preparation Thinking
The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poet World
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
Sonnet is about movement in a form.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Form Movement One Liner

The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God’s sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.

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The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God’s sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes