“A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“The underlying reason for writing is to bridge the gulf between one person and another.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Some writers, even some poets, become famous public figures, but writers as such have no social status, in the way that doctors… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Although you be, as I am, one of those Who feel a Christian ought to write in prose, For poetry is magic:… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“For all his claims to be just a propagandist, [Bernard Shaw's] writing has an effect nearer to that of music than most… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over. from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton ” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence; Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to express my… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else. She does not know, any more than the others, that he is malevolent,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the pleasures of… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Human "nature" is a nature continually in quest of itself, obliged at every moment to transcend what it was a moment before.” — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Cassio is a ladies’ man, that is to say, a man who feels most at home in feminine company where his looks and good… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out, as they… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Our hunting fathers told the story Of the sadness of the creatures, Pitied the limits and the lack Set in their finished features; Saw… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
