Seamus Heaney

"The bog is a kind of time machine."

"I love thatch, the messy accumulation of a life."

"Beauty is a form of courage."

"Words are sacred vessels."

"The truth is that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us."

"All I know is a door into the dark."

"Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed."

"The road not taken may still be ahead of us."

"Music is what feelings sound like."

"A poem should be a radiance, moving out from itself."

"The Ireland of my time was a very different place from what it became."

"In the longue durée, we are all dead."

"Technique is the outward sign of an inner conviction."

"The weight of the world is love."

"You are neither here nor there, but you belong everywhere."

"Fear is a form of respect."

"The ground itself is a kind of language."

"What we need is not innovation but deepening."

"A gift requires a giver and a receiver."

"The commonwealth of poetry transcends all borders."

"Conscience is the light by which we see all else."

"The bog man speaks across the centuries."

"We are the music while the music lasts."

"Language itself is a form of power and resistance."

"The self is made in the act of attention."

"Memory is a kind of forgetting."

"What sustains us is the clarity of our vision."

"The poem is always a test of your loyalty to language."

"Solitude feeds the creative impulse."

"The imagination is where freedom lives."