"One of the very first poems I wrote was Docker That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic and one of the sturdiest was Requiem for the Croppies, written 50 years after 1916 [the year of the Easter Rising]. Being responsible and what it means, what it demands, have indeed preoccupied me maybe too much. But this is it, this is the thing, this is what you're up against."

Next Quote

There is this really intimate connection that people have with the animals they're going to eat. A lot of people who eat meat say "I would never kill my own animals." Well, that means someone else is doing it for you, ultimately. This is the modern attitude that we have: Somebody else will do that for me. And to me, it just seemed wrong. I wanted to be part of the process of what it meant to eat meat. I wanted to be responsible.

— Novella Carpenter