Seamus Heaney Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
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A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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Do-gooders are easily overlooked. We're supposed to be soft, touchy-feely types, who wear Birkenstocks, compost everything, and write poetry by candlelight.
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Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.
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If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.
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I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'
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I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.
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One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
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Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
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I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
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If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
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Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.
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The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.
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The Victorian language of flowers began with the publication of 'Le Language des Fleurs,' written by Charlotte de Latour and printed in Paris in 1819. To create the book - which was a list of flowers and their meanings - de Latour gathered references to flower symbolism throughout poetry, ancient mythology, and even medicine.
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When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.
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Those books of mine that are remunerative - I'm not talking about poetry here - take years to write, and I am never sure they'll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
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It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do.
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If I see something really nasty on Twitter, I will usually delete it or block the person because I don't want to see that every day... Get to know me, and then you can talk about me!
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A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an institution such as the British Museum is for.
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I know how important it is to, you know, to be my own person.
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If you send your work to the magazines, you may be in for a shock. You may get a rejection note. The worst kind. A printed form. And probably you will be shattered. Shattered.
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Poetry is language in orbit.
