263 Quotes by Seamus Heaney

I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.

The dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.

To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for or stood up for or stood its ground against.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

Poetry is a domestic art, most itself when most at home.

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.

I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed students who won scholarships to go on to secondary schools and thence to university.

Wherever that man went, he went gratefully.

Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can't be too optimistic.