Seamus Finnigan Quotes

It looks like a Grim if you do this," Seamus Finnigan said, with his eyes almost shut, "but it looks more like a donkey from here," he said, leaning to the left. ~ J.K. Rowling

Bubotubers," Professor Sprout told them briskly. "They need squeezing. You will collect the pus - "
"The what?" said Seamus Finnigan, sounding revolted.
"Pus, Finnigan, pus," said Professor Sprout. ~ J.K. Rowling

Meanwhile, the sword
began to wilt into gory icicles,
to slather and thaw. It was a wonderful thing,
the way it all melted as ice melts
when the Father eases the fetters off the frost
and unravels the water-ropes. He who wields power
over time and tide: He is the true Lord. ~ Seamus Heaney

Seamus: "I was wondering if you would like to go get some coffee"
Cara: "Well that depends ... do you like to take long walks?"
Seamus: "Yes"
Cara: "Do you like sex?"
Seamus: "Yeees"
Cara: "Then take a f***ing hike and leave me the hell alone. ~ Erin McCarthy

Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again. ~ Seamus Heaney

If you just did what you wanted to do, and didn't care what anyone thought, you'd be Autistic. ~ Seamus McDuff

The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue. ~ Seamus Heaney

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

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. ~ Seamus Heaney

I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems ... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on. ~ Seamus Heaney

To work, her dumb lunge says,
is to move a certain mass
... through a certain distance,
is to pull your weight and feel
exact and equal to it.
Feel dragged upon. And buoyant. ~ Seamus Heaney

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. ~ Seamus Heaney

In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf ~ Christopher Paolini

The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go. ~ Seamus Heaney

It has taken almost half my life away from Ireland for me to truly feel what home really is, and it is not what I was expecting. In the end it was not a place, or a past, or any sort of single, dazzling epiphany. It was all the little things. Cold butter spread thick on sweet wheaten bread or hot, subsiding potatoes; the scent of wet, black soil; a bushy spine of grass on a one-track road; wide iron gates leading to high beech corridors; the chalky smell of a cow's wet muzzle, and, most of all, in Seamus Heaney's words, the sound of rivers in the trees. ~ Trish Deseine

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure
The bastion of sensation. Do not waver
Into language. Do not waver in it. ~ Seamus Heaney

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

I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh. ~ Seamus Heaney

My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God. ~ Seamus Heaney

It's hard to remain patient when it seems so debilitating to do so. The balance comes with staying ambitious while being patient. ~ Seamus Dever

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

You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport. ~ Seamus Heaney

To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in there. ~ Seamus Heaney

Let whoever can win glory before death. ~ Seamus Heaney

I like your heart, Seamus." She cups my cheek, kisses me softly on the corner of my mouth, and whispers, "My heart really likes your heart. ~ Kim Holden

My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children. ~ Seamus Heaney

Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation. ~ Seamus Heaney

Smile As you find a rhythm Working you, slow mile by mile, Into your proper haunt. ~ Seamus Heaney

'Monday Mornings' is so utterly different - in so many ways - from anything else I've done, really. I also desperately wanted an ensemble piece, but I couldn't have dreamed of being a part of something like this. I am so lucky. ~ Jennifer Finnigan

We talked about desire and being jealous,
Our conversation a loose single gown
Or a white picnic tablecloth spread out
Like a book of manners in the wilderness. ~ Seamus Heaney

This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees
Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.
Is there a life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup:
we hug our little destiny again.
-Whatever You Say Say Nothing ~ Seamus Heaney

The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse. ~ Seamus Heaney

Archibald MacLeish affirmed that 'A poem should be equal to / not true'. As a defiant statement of poetry's gift for telling truth but telling it slant, this is both cogent and corrective. Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a retuning of the world itself. We want the surprise to be transitive, like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm. We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there blue with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin's regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art could be equal to it. ~ Seamus Heaney

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also. ~ Seamus Heaney

If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries. ~ Seamus Heaney