All I know is a door into the dark

— Seamus Heaney

And a young prince must be prudent like that, giving freely while his father lives so that afterward, in age when fighting starts steadfast companions will stand by him and hold the line.

— Seamus Heaney

Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.

— Seamus Heaney

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

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

— Seamus Heaney

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

— Seamus Heaney

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

— Seamus Heaney

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.

— Seamus Heaney

Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look downhill his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened unto drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I have no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.

— Seamus Heaney

Don’t have the veins bulging in your Biro.

— Seamus Heaney