My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.

Wherever that man went, he went gratefully.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful... to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

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.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.