I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

quote by Seamus Heaney
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Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.

quote by Seamus Heaney
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At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

quote by Seamus Heaney
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In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

quote by Seamus Heaney
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As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

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Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.

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The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

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A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

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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.

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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.

quote by Seamus Heaney
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