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.

I've said it before about the Nobel Prize: it's like being struck by a more or less benign avalanche. It was unexpected, unlooked for, and extraordinary.

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

Seamus Heaney Quotes