Seamus Heaney Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Wherever that man went, he went gratefully.

  Seamus Heaney

  Men

  "Seamus Heaney obituary" by Neil Corcoran, www.theguardian.com. August 30, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Self, Empowerment

  "In their own words: literary giants who died this year" by Jess Sutcliffe, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2013.

  23 Copy quote

• Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between.

  Seamus Heaney

  Two, Buckets, Easier

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001”, p.58, Macmillan

  30 Copy quote

• Debate doesn’t really change things. It gets you bogged in deeper. If you can address or reopen the subject with something new, something from a different angle, then there is some hope. ... People are suddenly gazing at something else and pausing for a moment. And for the duration of that gaze and pause, they are like reflectors of the totality of their own knowledge and/or ignorance. That’s something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities.

  Seamus Heaney

  Ignorance, People, Different

  11 Copy quote

• Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.

  Seamus Heaney

  People, Behaviour, Path

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “New Selected Poems 1988-2013”, p.91, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

• Im a firm believer in learning by heart.

  Seamus Heaney

  Heart, Firm, Believer

  5 Copy quote

• Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green.

  Seamus Heaney

  Green, Passports, Ifs

  'Open Letter' (Field Day pamphlet no. 2, 1983) p. 9, rebuking the editors of 'The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry' for including him among its authors

  46 Copy quote

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

  Seamus Heaney

  Attitude, Home, Figure Skating

  41 Copy quote

• The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.

  Seamus Heaney

  Effort, Community, Plies

  18 Copy quote

• There is not built-in meaning to anything, we are free to add any meaning we choose to give it.

  Seamus Heaney

  Giving, Add, Built

  4 Copy quote

• The ability to start out upon your own impulse is
  fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own
  terms. . . . Getting started, keeping going, getting started
  again in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm.

  Seamus Heaney

  Inspirational, Art, Fundamentals

  12 Copy quote

• The next move is always the test.

  Seamus Heaney

  Moving, Next Move, Tests

  14 Copy quote

• The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.

  Seamus Heaney

  Reality, Long, Minorities

  17 Copy quote

• I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

  Seamus Heaney

  Poetry, Darkness, Rhyme

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Poems, 1965-1975”, p.40, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• If self is a location, so is love.

  Seamus Heaney

  Self, Location, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

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

  Seamus Heaney

  Writing, Joy, Rewards

  "To set the darkness echoing". Interview with Dennis O'Driscoll, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2008.

  18 Copy quote

• I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself.

  Seamus Heaney

  Stones, Stepping Stones, Oneself

  "In their own words: literary giants who died this year" by Jess Sutcliffe, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.

  Seamus Heaney

  Writing, Impulse, Ifs

  9 Copy quote

• I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

  Seamus Heaney

  Space, Credit, Walks

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture”, p.9, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

  Seamus Heaney

  Desolation, Operations, Difficult

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.422, Macmillan

  18 Copy quote

• The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.

  Seamus Heaney

  Spiritual, Men, Emotional

  Source: www.questia.com

  12 Copy quote

• I don't miss teaching. I'm learning to take my time for myself.

  Seamus Heaney

  Teaching, Missing, My Time

  Source: harvardmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

  Seamus Heaney

  Strange, Huge

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Death of a Naturalist: Poems”, p.44, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. ~from the poem "Digging

  Seamus Heaney

  Gun, Digging, Thumbs

  Seamus Heaney (2009). “Death of a Naturalist”, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

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

  Seamus Heaney

  Risk, World

  6 Copy quote

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