Seamus Heaney

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

I'm not personally obsessed with death. At a certain age, the light that you live in is inhabited by the shades - it 'tis.

Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can't be too optimistic.

It's good to like yourself, and that only comes from hard work, from doing. But vanity is dangerous; it can trip you badly.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.