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Time & Perspective Quote by Seamus Heaney

"I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward"

About this Quote

Writing, for Heaney, isn`t the dour labor people like to mythologize; it`s a physical updraft. That word "lift" is doing quiet heavy lifting itself: it suggests buoyancy, a bodily sensation, the way a line can raise you a fraction above the day`s mud. Coming from a poet who made literal ground (peat, bog, clay) into moral and musical terrain, the image carries subtext: art is not an escape from weight so much as a brief suspension of it. Heaney spent his career translating pressure into cadence - sectarian violence, rural inheritance, the demand to speak for a place without becoming its spokesperson. "Lift" names the rare instant when those burdens stop feeling like obligations and start behaving like energy.

The structure matters too. "Moment" repeats, twice, like a measured breath: he`s not promising permanent bliss, just the flash of it, the workable kind that keeps a practice going. Then he slips in "unexpected reward", which counters the idea that writing is merely the execution of intention. For Heaney, the best part arrives unbidden - a phrase that lands cleaner than you planned, an image that opens a door you didn`t know was there. It`s a theology of craft without the sermon: grace, but earned through attention.

Placed against Heaney`s public stature (Nobel laureate, cultural ballast for Ireland), the line reads almost defiant. It insists the private, intimate pleasure of making is the real engine, not prestige or pronouncement. The poet isn`t elevated by fame; he`s lifted by the sentence.

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TopicWriting
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Heaney, Seamus. (n.d.). I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-always-associated-the-moment-of-writing-with-11079/

Chicago Style
Heaney, Seamus. "I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-always-associated-the-moment-of-writing-with-11079/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ive-always-associated-the-moment-of-writing-with-11079/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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Seamus Heaney on the moment of lift in writing
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About the Author

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Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939 - August 30, 2013) was a Poet from Ireland.

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