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Irish readers, British readers, American readers: is it odd that I haven't a clue about how differently they react? Or better say, I cannot find the words to describe my hunch about them.

Seamus Heaney

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Seamus Heaney
Age: 74 †
Born: 1939
Born: April 13
Died: 2013
Died: August 30
Actor
Author
Linguist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Seamus Justin Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Reader
React
American
Odd
Words
Differently
Cannot
Readers
Better
Describe
Hunch
Find
British
Hunches
Havens
Irish
Haven
Clue

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I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself.
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But that citizen's 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.
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Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests snug as a gun. ~from the poem Digging
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When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.
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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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Suspect too much sweet talk but never close your mind.
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I suppose I did feel a certain public pressure always.
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I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time.
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In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
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Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
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I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks.
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The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost.
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Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.
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If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
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Write whatever you like!
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I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.
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My body was braille for the creeping influences.
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The end of art is peace.
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But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.
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Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. -Blackberry picking
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