Seamus Heaney quotes

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At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
Seamus Heaney
Home
Attitude
Habit
Authority
Ireland
I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.
Seamus Heaney
Joy
Reward
Writing
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
Seamus Heaney
Mother
Father
World
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
Expectation
Public
I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
Seamus Heaney
Life
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
Realism
Sense
Writers
I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
Seamus Heaney
Poetry
Credit
Space
Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.
Seamus Heaney
Succeed
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
Perception
Possibilities
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
Seamus Heaney
Poetry
Truth
Fact
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
Seamus Heaney
Ireland
Irish
Now
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
Seamus Heaney
Hope
Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.
Seamus Heaney
Consciousness
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
Seamus Heaney
Poetry
Order
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