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.
SEAMUS HEANEYWe go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves.
More Seamus Heaney Quotes
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My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children.
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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.
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Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.
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Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
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In the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
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I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
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One doesn’t want one’s identity coerced.
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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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The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
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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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My experience is that prose usually equals duty – last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.
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One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a ‘binge’ writer – like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
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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.
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I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.
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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