Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
Seamus HeaneyRead
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The author reflects on the literary influences of his parents, highlighting the significance of their tastes.
In this quote, Seamus Heaney illustrates the profound impact that his parents' literary preferences had on his own worldview and creative development. By referencing Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, he emphasizes not only the different styles and themes these authors represent but also how parental influence shapes one's identity and artistic inclinations.
Themes
LiteratureInfluenceFamilyIdentityHeritage
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on literary influences, one might cite this quote to illustrate how family shapes our tastes.
More from Seamus Heaney
All quotes βWhat I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
Seamus HeaneyRead
The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don't have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.
Seamus HeaneyRead
If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.
Seamus HeaneyRead
In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work - the hay in the summertime, for example.
Seamus HeaneyRead
I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright - it reflects you.
Seamus HeaneyRead
Similar quotes
I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.
Maggie StiefvaterRead
A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.
Marcel ProustRead
I loathe people who say, 'I always read the ending of the book first.' That really irritates me, It's like someone coming to dinner, just opening the fridge and eating pudding, while you're standing there still working on the starter. It's not on.
J. K. RowlingRead
He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.
Christopher HitchensRead
Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.
T. S. EliotRead