"Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for."
"Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started."
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Source: Seamus Heaney (2014). “Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978”, p.112, Macmillan
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"Believe that a further shore is reachable from here."
"Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained."
"Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done."
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