I'm a firm believer in learning by heart.

— Seamus Heaney

I'm very conscious that people dear to me are alive in my imagination - poets in particular.

— Seamus Heaney

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

— Seamus Heaney

In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.

— Seamus Heaney

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

— Seamus Heaney

In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.

— Seamus Heaney

In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.

— Seamus Heaney

In the United States, in poetry workshops, it's now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.

— Seamus Heaney

I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

— Seamus Heaney

I spend almost every morning with mail.

— Seamus Heaney