Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
Seamus HeaneyRead
It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them... They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers often express their internal struggles through their work, finding clarity in the process.
Seamus Heaney suggests that a significant aspect of a writer's craft is rooted in their personal struggles and stress. The act of writing becomes a therapeutic endeavor, allowing them to articulate emotions and thoughts that might be troubling them. When they manage to convey these feelings effectively in their writing, they achieve a sense of fulfillment and correctness in their expression.
Themes
WritingExpressionStressCreativityArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of authentic expression.
More from Seamus Heaney
All quotes →What 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
There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.
Keith RichardsRead
If a Million People See My Movie, I Hope They See a Million Different Movies.
Quentin TarantinoRead
There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.
John UpdikeRead
Poetry confronts in the most clear-eyed way just those emotions which consciousness wishes to slide by.
C. K. WilliamsRead
Oh! Moon of Alabama We now must say good-bye We've lost our good old mama And must have whiskey Oh, you know why!
Bertolt BrechtRead
Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.
Robert HenriRead