There Is Risk And Truth To Yourselves

The Appointment [in Harvard] Gave Me Economic Safety, Writerly Support, And Intellectual Self-respectplus Eight Months To Myself Every Year.

The Most Exhilarating For The Writer And The Reader, Are Gift-things-poems Which Arrive On Their Own Energy, Poems That In William Shakespeare's Term "slip" From You.

Not To Learn Irish Is To Miss The Opportunity Of Understanding What Life In This Country Has Meant And Could Mean In A Better Future. It Is To Cut Oneself Off From Ways Of Being At Home. If We Regard Self-understanding, Mutual Understanding, Imaginative Enhancement, Cultural Diversity And A Tolerant Political Atmosphereas A Desirable Attainments, We Should Remember That A Knowledge Of The Irish Language Is An Essential Element In Their Realisation.

Publication Is Rather Like Pushing The Boat Out; Then The Boat/book Turns Into A Melting Ice Floe And You Have To Conjure A Second Boat Which Again Turns Into A Melting Floe Under Your Feet. All The Stepping Stones That You Conjure Disappear Under The Water Behind You.

It Is Difficult At Times To Repress The Thought That History Is About As Instructive As An Abattoir.