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" My passport's green. "
Seamus Heaney
Green
Passport
Related Quotes:
" I've been in the habit of helping people. "
Seamus Heaney
People
Habit
Been
" I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on. "
Seamus Heaney
Got
Rules
Reading
" A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious. "
Seamus Heaney
Naturally
Ireland
Cautious
" Write whatever you like! "
Seamus Heaney
Whatever
You
Write
" The day I entered St Columb's College, my parents bought me a Conway Stewart pen. It was a special afternoon, of course. We were going to be parting that evening; they were aware of it, I was aware of it, nothing much was said about it. "
Seamus Heaney
Evening
College
Day
" I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written. "
Seamus Heaney
Would
Whatever
Had
" Since I was a schoolboy, I've been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and being bantered with and, indeed, being taunted. "
Seamus Heaney
Old
Recognized
Road
" Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started. "
Seamus Heaney
Always
Way
Remembering
" Sonnet is about movement in a form. "
Seamus Heaney
About
Form
Sonnet
" History says, 'Don't hope on this side of the grave.' "
Seamus Heaney
History
Says
Side
" If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness. "
Seamus Heaney
Anything
Your
Poetry
" If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries. "
Seamus Heaney
London
Train
You
" The kind of poet who founds and reconstitutes values is somebody like Yeats or Whitman - these are public value-founders. "
Seamus Heaney
Who
Somebody
Values
" Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel. "
Seamus Heaney
Solidarity
Judging
Poetry
" I'm not personally obsessed with death. At a certain age, the light that you live in is inhabited by the shades - it 'tis. "
Seamus Heaney
Shades
Light
Live
" I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh. "
Seamus Heaney
Think
Heir
I Think
" In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance. "
Seamus Heaney
Poetry
Intensity
Everything
" I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment. "
Seamus Heaney
Disappointment
Preparation
Childhood
" Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again. "
Seamus Heaney
Move
Succeed
Inner
" As a young poet, you need corroboration, and that's what publication does. "
Seamus Heaney
Young
Need
Poet
" My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God. "
Seamus Heaney
Reality
Language
Kind
" I spend almost every morning with mail. "
Seamus Heaney
Every
Spend
Morning
" My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally. "
Seamus Heaney
Point
Hidden
Speech
" I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward. "
Seamus Heaney
Reward
Joy
Writing
" The end of art is peace. "
Seamus Heaney
Art
Peace
End
" At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "
Seamus Heaney
Authority
Figure
Habit
" I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing. "
Seamus Heaney
Hope
Time
Thought
" Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it. "
Seamus Heaney
Poetry
Hard
Anything
" What I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar. "
Seamus Heaney
Famous
Only
Said
" Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker. "
Seamus Heaney
Climb
Big
Up