Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIAwas an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1939
CityCastledawson, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
Seamus Heaney quotes about
generally
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
art domestic home itself poetry
Poetry is a domestic art, most itself when most at home.
allowed education ireland northern schools secondary students won
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.
anyone bred northern
Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can't be too optimistic.
although amount bottom grow material reach sensory stored systems touch unless
The amount of sensory material stored up or stored down in the brain's and the body's systems is inestimable. It's like a culture at the bottom of a jar, although it doesn't grow, I think, or help anything else to grow unless you find a way to reach it and touch it.
hope ifs
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
soul body drink
I drink to keep body and soul apart.
optimism conviction wells
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.
green passports ifs
Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green.
senior art way
Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and has lived selflessly for the art
mysterious wonder poetry-is
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
two buckets grew
Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between.
dark doors knows
All I know is a door into the dark
way chance ifs
If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.