The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost. – Seamus Heaney
But that citizens 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
The completely solitary self: thats where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also. – Seamus Heaney
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself. – Seamus Heaney
There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition. – Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1