black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I’ve always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

Seamus Heaney

My point is there’s a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It’s a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Complication Factor Myself Point Talk
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
I spend almost every morning with mail.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mail Morning Myself
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
Your temperament is what you write with, but it’s also how you deal with the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deal Temperature World Writing
It’s difficult to learn poems off by heart that don’t rhyme.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Difficult Heart Learning Rhyme
I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Beginning Life Myself Thinking Wide
If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Art Life Poetry Yourself
I think that water is immediately interesting. It’s just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright – it reflects you.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Bright Interesting Life Myself Reflection Thinking Water
I’ve said it before about the Nobel Prize: it’s like being struck by a more or less benign avalanche. It was unexpected, unlooked for, and extraordinary.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Expectation Nobel Ordinary Prize
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
A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Caution Natural Person
Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Forever Life
The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Poet World
The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It’s a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Experiment Kind Myself Poetry Programme Writing
Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Case Chapter History Poetry

I’ve always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I’ve always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Seamus Heaney Quotes