457 Quotes by W. H. Auden

All that we are not stares back at what we are.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.