Seamus Heaney Quotes

I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.
Seamus Heaney

Whatever, Written, Somehow

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
Seamus Heaney

Truth, Poetry, Fact

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
Seamus Heaney

Poetry, Wonder, Mysterious

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.
Seamus Heaney

Poetry, Political, Said

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
Seamus Heaney

Hope, Started, Hopes

Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
Seamus Heaney

Again, Succeed, Last

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

Writing, Joy, Moment

There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
Seamus Heaney

Truth, Before, Risk

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.
Seamus Heaney

Positive, Sense, Writers

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
Seamus Heaney

Home, Attitude, Authority

But 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.
Seamus Heaney

Change, Trust, Truth

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
Seamus Heaney

Poetry, Making, Possible

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
Seamus Heaney

Life, Original, Series

I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
Seamus Heaney

Mother, Father, Hardy

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

Poetry, Last, Order

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

Point, Anyone, Speech

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

Poetry, Crisis, Self

The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost.
Seamus Heaney

Life, Poetry, Matter

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
Seamus Heaney

Irish, Imagine, Helped

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, Climb

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

Mind, End, Thought

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.
Seamus Heaney

Marriage, Peace, Political

Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.
Seamus Heaney

Needing, Site, Contending

Write whatever you like!
Seamus Heaney

Whatever, Write

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Biography

Nationality: Irish

Type: Poet

Born: April 13, 1939

Links

Find on Amazon: Seamus Heaney

Cite this Page: Citation

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