No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.

I don't in any sense think of myself as a celebrity, which of course I'm not.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.

I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.