263 Quotes by Seamus Heaney

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.

Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.

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

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.

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

Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.

Now it’s high watermark and floodtide in the heart and time to go. The sea-nymphs in the spray will be the chorus now. What’s left to say? Suspect too much sweet-talk but never close your mind. It was a fortunate wind that blew me here. I leave half-ready to believe that a crippled trust might walk and the half-true rhyme is love.

Im a firm believer in learning by heart.