Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it. – Seamus Heaney
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
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
As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note. – Seamus Heaney