In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
SEAMUS HEANEYBut that citizen’s perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.
More Seamus Heaney Quotes
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I spend almost every morning with mail.
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Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.
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Since I was a schoolboy, I’ve been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and being bantered with and, indeed, being taunted.
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The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don’t have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.
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You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
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I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
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I came from a farming background, and my career was teaching.
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Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
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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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Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.
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The problem as you get older, is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to surprise yourself. There’s no way of arranging the surprise, so it is tricky.
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I always had a superstitious fear of setting up a too well-designed writing place and then finding that the writing had absconded.
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In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.
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My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
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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