451 Quotes by W.H. Auden

I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: ‘Whom do you write for?’ I reply: ‘Do you read me?’ If they say ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘Do you like it?’ If they say ‘No,’ then I say, ‘I don’t write for you.’

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

Swans in the winter air A white perfection have.

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.

Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.