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
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
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. – Seamus Heaney
There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. – John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994