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It's Frightfully Important For A Writer To Be His Age, Not To Be Younger Or Older Than He Is. One Might Ask, "what Should I Write At The Age Of Sixty-four," But Never, "what Should I Write In 1940."

-W. H. Auden

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It's Frightfully Important For

W. H. Auden

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It's Frightfully Important For A Writer To Be His Age, Not To Be Younger Or Older Than He Is. One Might Ask, "what Should I Write At The Age Of Sixty-four," But Never, "what Should I Write In 1940."

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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.

Poetry Might Be Defined As The Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings.

The Critical Opinions Of A Writer Should Always Be Taken With A Large Grain Of Salt. For The Most Part, They Are Manifestations Of His Debate With Himself As To What He Should Do Next And What He Should Avoid.

The Habit-forming Pain, Mismanagement And Grief: We Must Suffer Them All Again.

Poetry Is The Only Art People Haven't Learned To Consume Like Soup.

We Who Must Die Demand A Miracle. How Could The Eternal Do A Temporal Act, The Infinite Become A Finite Fact? Nothing Can Save Us That Is Possible: We Who Must Die Demand A Miracle.

The Truly Tragic Kind Of Suffering Is The Kind Produced And Defiantly Insisted Upon By The Hero Himself So That, Instead Of Making Him Better, It Makes Him Worse And When He Dies He Is Not Reconciled To The Law But Defiant, That Is, Damned. Lear Is Not A Tragic Hero, Othello Is.

History Is, Strictly Speaking, The Study Of Questions; The Study Of Answers Belongs To Anthropology And Sociology.

The Basic Stimulus To The Intelligence Is Doubt, A Feeling That The Meaning Of An Experience Is Not Self-evident.

But He Would Have Us Most Of All Remember To Be Enthusiastic Over The Night. Not Only For The Sense Of Wonder It Alone Has To Offer But Also Because It Needs Our Love. For With Sad Eyes Its Delectable Creatures Look Up And Beg Us Dumbly To Ask Them To Follow. They Are Exiles Who Long For A Future That Lies In Our Power.

It Takes Little Talent To See What Lies Under One's Nose, A Good Deal To Know In What Direction To Point That Organ.

Thou Shalt Not Answer Questionnaires Or Quizzes Upon World Affairs, Nor With Compliance Take Any Test. Thou Shalt Not Sit With Statisticians Nor Commit A Social Science.

You Will Be A Poet Because You Will Always Be Humiliated.

Of Course, Behaviourism 'works'. So Does Torture. Give Me A No-nonsense, Down-to-earth Behaviourist, A Few Drugs, And Simple Electrical Appliances, And In Six Months I Will Have Him Reciting The Athanasian Creed In Public.

It Has Been Said That A Poem Should Not Mean But Be. This Is Not Quite Accurate. In A Poem, As Distinct From Many Other Kinds Of Verbal Societies, Meaning And Being Are Identical. A Poem Might Be Called A Pseudo-person. Like A Person, It Is Unique And Addresses The Reader Personally. On The Other Hand, Like A Natural Being And Unlike A Historical Person, It Cannot Lie.

A Verbal Art Like Poetry Is Reflective; It Stops To Think. Music Is Immediate, It Goes On To Become.

The Masculine Imagination Lives In A State Of Perpetual Revolt Against The Limitations Of Human Life. In Theological Terms, One Might Say That All Men, Left To Themselves, Become Gnostics. They May Swagger Like Peacocks, But In Their Heart Of Hearts They All Think Sex An Indignity And Wish They Could Beget Themselves On Themselves. Hence The Aggressive Hostility Toward Women So Manifest In Most Club-car Stories.

We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others.

The Three Wiseman: The Weather Has Been Awful, The Countryside Is Dreary, Marsh, Jungle, Rock; And Echoes Mock, Calling Our Hope Unlawful; But A Silly Song Can Help Along Yours Ever And Sincerely: At Least We Know For Certain That We Are Three Old Sinners, That This Journey Is Much Too Long, That We Want Our Dinners, And Miss Our Wives, Our Books, Our Dogs, But Have Only The Vaguest Idea Why We Are What We Are. To Discover How To Be Human Now Is The Reason We Follow This Star.

All Pity Is Self-pity.

The Eye Likes Novelty, But The Ear Craves Familiarity.

Had Greek Civilization Never Existed ... We Would Never Have Become Fully Conscious.

A Poet Must Never Make A Statement Simply Because It Is Sounds Poetically Exciting; He Must Also Believe It To Be True.

To Make One, There Must Be Two.

All I Have Is A Voice To Undo The Folded Lie, The Romantic Lie In The Brain Of The Sensual Man-in-the-street And The Lie Of Authority Whose Buildings Grope The Sky: There Is No Such Thing As The State And No One Exists Alone; Hunger Allows No Choice To The Citizen Or The Police; We Must Love One Another Or Die.

O Let Not Time Deceive You, You Cannot Conquer Time.

No Good Opera Plot Can Be Sensible, For People Do Not Sing When They Are Feeling Sensible.

The Most Exciting Rhythms Seem Unexpected And Complex, The Most Beautiful Melodies Simple And Inevitable.

Sob, Heavy World Sob As You Spin, Mantled In Mist Remote From The Happy.

But If A Stranger In The Train Asks Me My Occupation, I Never Answer "writer" For Fear That He May Go On To Ask Me What I Write, And To Answer "poetry" Would Embarrass Us Both, For We Both Know That Nobody Can Earn A Living Simply By Writing Poetry.

Fame Often Makes A Writer Vain, But Seldom Makes Him Proud.

One Demands Two Things Of A Poem. Firstly, It Must Be A Well-made Verbal Object That Does Honor To The Language In Which It Is Written. Secondly, It Must Say Something Significant About A Reality Common To Us All, But Perceived From A Unique Perspective. What The Poet Says Has Never Been Said Before, But, Once He Has Said It, His Readers Recognize Its Validity For Themselves.

The Definition Of Prayer Is Paying Careful And Concentrated Attention To Something Other Than Your Own Constructions.

As A Rule, It Was The Pleasure-haters Who Became Unjust.

Precisely Because We Do Not Communicate By Singing, A Song Can Be Out Of Place But Not Out Of Character; It Is Just As Credible That A Stupid Person Should Sing Beautifully As That A Clever Person Should Do So.

If We Really Want To Live, We'd Better Start At Once To Try.

I And The Public Know What All Schoolchildren Learn, Those To Whom Evil Is Done Do Evil In Return.

Those Who Will Not Reason, Perish In The Act. Those Who Will Not Act, Perish For That Reason.

Every Poet Has His Dream Reader: Mine Keeps A Look Out For Curious Prosodic Fauna Like Bacchics And Choriambs.

To Pray Is To Pay Attention To Something Or Someone Other Than Oneself. Whenever A Man So Concentrates His Attention - On A Landscape, A Poem, A Geometrical Problem, An Idol, Or The True God - That He Completely Forgets His Own Ego And Desires, He Is Praying. The Primary Task Of The Schoolteacher Is To Teach Children, In A Secular Context, The Technique Of Prayer.

We Must Love One Another Or Die

Behind The Corpse In The Reservoir, Behind The Ghost On The Links, Behind The Lady Who Dances And The Man Who Madly Drinks, Under The Look Of Fatigue, The Attack Of Migraine And The Sigh There Is Always Another Story, There Is More Than Meets The Eye.

All The Rest Is Silence On The Other Side Of The Wall, And The Silence Ripeness, And The Ripeness All.

Lovers Have Lived So Long With Giants And Elves, They Won't Believe Again In Their Own Size.

Men Will Pay Large Sums To Whores For Telling Them They Are Not Bores.

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.

Those Who Hate To Go To Bed Fear Death; Those Who Hate To Get Up Fear Life.

We Would Rather Be Ruined Than Changed. We Would Rather Die In Our Dread Than Climb The Cross Of The Moment And Let Our Illusions Die.

Every High C Accurately Struck Demolishes The Theory That We Are The Irresponsible Puppets Of Fate Or Chance.

Life Is A Picnic On A Precipice.

The Surest Sign That A Man Has A Genuine Taste Of His Own Is That He Is Uncertain Of It.

Over The Tea-cups And In The Square The Tongue Has Its Desire; Still Waters Run Deep, My Dear, There's Never Smoke Without Fire.

In The End, Art Is Small Beer. The Really Serious Things Are Earning One's Living So As Not To Be A Parasite And Loving One's Neighbor.

My Face Looks Like A Wedding-cake Left Out In The Rain.

The True Men Of Action In Our Time Those Who Transform The World Are Not The Politicians And Statesmen But The Scientists. Unfortunately Poetry Cannot Celebrate Them Because Their Deeds Are Concerned With Things, Not Persons, And Are Therefore Speechless. When I Find Myself In The Company Of Scientists, I Feel Like A Shabby Curate Who Has Strayed By Mistake Into A Drawing Room Full Of Dukes.

Learn From Your Dreams What You Lack.

The Parlour Cars And Pullmans Are Packed Also With Scented Assassins, Salad-eaters Who Murder On Milk.

About Suffering They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters.

All Wishes, Whatever Their Apparent Content, Have The Same And Unvarying Meaning: "i Refuse To Be What I Am."

The Americans Are Violently Oral. That's Why In America The Mother Is All-important And The Father Has No Position At All -- Isn't Respected In The Least. Even The American Passion For Laxatives Can Be Explained As An Oral Manifestation. They Want To Get Rid Of Any Unpleasantness Taken In Through The Mouth.

The Primary Function Of Poetry, As Of All The Arts, Is To Make Us More Aware Of Ourselves And The World Around Us. I Do Not Know If Such Increased Awareness Makes Us More Moral Or More Efficient. I Hope Not. I Think It Makes Us More Human, And I Am Quite Certain It Makes Us More Difficult To Deceive.

You Must Go To Bed With Friends Or Whores, Where Money Makes Up The Difference In Beauty Or Desire.

The Relation Of Faith Between Subject And Object Is Unique In Every Case. Hundreds May Believe, But Each Has To Believe By Himself.

Stop All The Clocks, Cut Off The Telephone, Prevent The Dog From Barking With A Juicy Bone. Silence The Pianos And With Muffled Drum Bring Out The Coffin, Let The Mourners Come.

Politics Cannot Be A Science, Because In Politics Theory And Practice Cannot Be Separated, And The Sciences Depend Upon Their Separation.

Nobody Is Ever Sent To Hell: He Or She Insists On Going There.

Political History Is Far Too Criminal To Be A Fit Subject Of Study For The Young. Children Should Acquire Their Heroes And Villians From Fiction.

God May Reduce You On Judgment Day To Tears Of Shame, Reciting By Heart The Poems You Would Have Written, Had Your Life Been Good.

We Are Not Commanded (or Forbidden) To Love Our Mates, Our Children, Our Friends, Our Country Because Such Affections Come Naturally To Us And Are Good In Themselves, Although We May Corrupt Them. We Are Commanded To Love Our Neighbor Because Our Natural Attitude Toward The Other Is One Of Either Indifference Or Hostility.

Christ Did Not Enchant Men; He Demanded That They Believe In Him: Except On One Occasion, The Transfiguration. For A Brief While, Peter, James, And John Were Permitted To See Him In His Glory. For That Brief While They Had No Need Of Faith. The Vision Vanished, And The Memory Of It Did Not Prevent Them From All Forsaking Him When He Was Arrested, Or Peter From Denying That He Had Ever Known Him.

Harrow The House Of The Dead; Look Shining At New Styles Of Architecture, A Change Of Heart.

All Sins Tend To Be Addictive, And The Terminal Point Of Addiction Is Damnation.

It's A Pity I Am So Impatient And Careless, As Any Ordinary Person Could Learn All The Techniques Of Photography In A Week. It Is The Democratic Art, I.e. Technical Skill Is Practically Eliminated - The More Foolproof Cameras Become With Focusing And Exposure Gadgets The Better - And Artistic Quality Depends Only On Choice Of Subject.

The Windiest Militant Trash Important Persons Shout Is Not So Crude As Our Wish: What Mad Nijinsky Wrote About Diaghilev Is True Of The Normal Heart; For The Error Bred In The Bone Of Each Woman And Each Man Craves What It Cannot Have; Not Universal Love But To Be Loved Alone.

Sexual Fidelity Is More Important In A Homosexual Relationship Than In Any Other. In Other Relationships There Are A Variety Of Ties. But Here, Fidelity Is The Only Bond.

Without Art, We Should Have No Notion Of The Sacred; Without Science, We Should Always Worship False Gods.

The Most Important Truths Are Likely To Be Those Which Society At That Time Least Wants To Hear.

Rhymes, Meters, Stanza Forms, Etc., Are Like Servants. If The Master Is Fair Enough To Win Their Affection And Firm Enough To Command Their Respect, The Result Is An Orderly Happy Household. If He Is Too Tyrannical, They Give Notice; If He Lacks Authority, They Become Slovenly, Impertinent, Drunk And Dishonest.

In A Land Which Is Fully Settled, Most Men Must Accept Their Local Environment Or Try To Change It By Political Means; Only The Exceptionally Gifted Or Adventurous Can Leave To Seek His Fortune Elsewhere. In America, On The Other Hand, To Move On And Make A Fresh Start Somewhere Else Is Still The Normal Reaction To Dissatisfaction And Failure.

What Living Occasion Can, Be Just To The Absent?

It's Better To Say, 'i'm Suffering,' Than To Say, 'this Landscape Is Ugly.

A Professor Is Someone Who Talks In Someone Else's Sleep.

You Need Not See What Someone Is Doing To Know If It Is His Vocation, You Have Only To Watch His Eyes: A Cook Mixing A Sauce, A Surgeon Making A Primary Incision, A Clerk Completing A Bill Of Lading Wear The Same Rapt Expression, Forgetting Themselves In A Function. How Beautiful It Is, That Eye-on-the-obje Ct Look.

One Rational Voice Is Dumb: Over A Grave The Household Of Impulse Mourns One Dearly Loved. Sad Is Eros, Builder Of Cities, And Weeping Anarchic Aphrodite.

The Class Distinctions Proper To A Democratic Society Are Not Those Of Rank Or Money, Still Less, As Is Apt To Happen When These Are Abandoned, Of Race, But Of Age.

Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led.

There Are Three Cardinal Rules - Don't Take Somebody Else's Boyfriend Unless You've Been Specifically Invited To Do So, Don't Take A Drink Without Being Asked, And Keep A Scrupulous Accounting In Financial Matters.

Words Have No Word For Words That Are Not True.

Most People Enjoy The Sight Of Their Own Handwriting As They Enjoy The Smell Of Their Own Farts.

Beauty, Midnight, Vision Dies: Let The Winds Of Dawn That Blow Softly Round Your Dreaming Head Such A Day Of Welcome Show Eye And Knocking Heart May Bless, Find Our Mortal World Enough; Noons Of Dryness Find You Fed By The Involuntary Powers, Nights Of Insult Let You Pass Watched By Every Human Love.

It Is Nonsense To Speak Of 'higher' And 'lower' Pleasures. To A Hungry Man It Is, Rightly, More Important That He Eat Than That He Philosophize.

Let All Your Thinks Be Thanks.

Proper Names Are Poetry In The Raw. Like All Poetry They Are Untranslatable.

Few People Take An Interest In Iceland, But In Those Few The Interest Is Passionate.

Behind You Swiftly The Figure Comes Softly, The Spot On Your Skin Is A Shocking Disease.

If The Most Significant Characteristic Of Man Is The Complex Of Biological Needs He Shares With All Members Of His Species, Then The Best Lives For The Writer To Observe Are Those In Which The Role Of Natural Necessity Is Clearest, Namely, The Lives Of The Very Poor.

A God Who Is Both Self-sufficient And Content To Remain So Could Not Interest Us Enough To Raise The Question Of His Existence.

In Headaches And In Worry Vaguely Life Leaks Away, And Time Will Have His Fancy To-morrow Or Today.

Earth, Receive An Honored Guest; William Yeats Is Laid To Rest. Let The Irish Vessel Lie Emptied Of Its Poetry.

If Time Were The Wicked Sheriff In A Horse Opera, I'd Pay For Riding Lessons And Take His Gun Away.

Geniuses Are The Luckiest Of Mortals Because What They Must Do Is The Same As What They Most Want To Do.

Moreover, If Great Men Are The Only Hope Of The Evolutionary Process, They Are Morally Bound To Rule Over The Masses For Their Own Good -- We Are All Here On Earth To Help Others: What On Earth The Others Are Here For, I Don't Know -- And The Masses Have No Right Whatsoever To Resist Them.

It Is, For Example, Axiomatic That We Should All Think Of Ourselves As Being More Sensitive Than Other People Because, When We Are Insensitive In Our Dealings With Others, We Cannot Be Aware Of It At The Time: Conscious Insensitivity Is A Self-contradiction.

Intellectual Disgrace Stares From Every Human Face, And The Seas Of Pity Lie Locked And Frozen In Each Eye.

It's Impossible To Represent A Saint [in Art]. It Becomes Boring. Perhaps Because He Is, Like The Saturday Evening Post People, Inthe Position Of Having Almost Infinitely Free Will.

That The Speech Of Self-disclosure Should Be Translatable Seems To Me Very Odd, But I Am Convinced That It Is. The Conclusion That I Draw Is That The Only Quality Which All Human Being Without Exception Possess Is Uniqueness: Any Characteristic, On The Other Hand, Which One Individual Can Be Recognized As Having In Common With Another, Like Red Hair Or The English Language, Implies The Existence Of Other Individual Qualities Which This Classification Excludes.

Who On Earth Invented The Silly Convention That It Is Boring Or Impolite To Talk Shop? Nothing Is More Interesting To Listen To, Especially If The Shop Is Not One's Own.

Drama Is Based On The Mistake.

The Lights Must Never Go Out, The Music Must Always Play

In Order That People May Be Happy In Their Work, These Three Things Are Needed: They Must Be Fit For It: They Must Not Do Too Much Of It: And They Must Have A Sense Of Success In It - Not A Doubtful Sense, Such As Needs Some Testimony Of Others For Its Confirmation, But A Sure Sense, Or Rather Knowledge, That So Much Work Has Been Done Well, And Fruitfully Done, Whatever The World May Say Or Think About It.

Swans In The Winter Air A White Perfection Have

Drama Is Based On The Mistake. I Think Someone Is My Friend When He Really Is My Enemy, That I Am Free To Marry A Woman When In Fact She Is My Mother, That This Person Is A Chambermaid When It Is A Young Nobleman In Disguise, That This Well-dressed Young Man Is Rich When He Is Really A Penniless Adventurer, Or That If I Do This Such And Such A Result Will Follow When In Fact It Results In Something Very Different. All Good Drama Has Two Movements, First The Making Of The Mistake, Then The Discovery That It Was A Mistake.

A Poor American Feels Guilty At Being Poor, But Less Guilty Than An American Rentier Who Has Inherited Wealth But Is Doing Nothingto Increase It; What Can The Latter Do But Take To Drink And Psychoanalysis?

Laziness Acknowledges The Relation Of The Present To The Past But Ignores Its Relation To The Future; Impatience Acknowledge Its Relation To The Future But Ignores Its Relation To The Past; Neither The Lazy Nor The Impatient Man, That Is, Accepts The Present Instant In Its Full Reality And So Cannot Love His Neighbour Completely.

The Chances Are That, In The Course Of His Lifetime, The Major Poet Will Write More Bad Poems Than The Minor, Simply Because Major Poets Write A Lot.

I Sit In One Of The Dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain And Afraid As The Clever Hopes Expire Of A Low Dishonest Decade

Fate Succumbs Many A Species: One Alone Jeopardises Itself.

Encased In Talent Like A Uniform, The Rank Of Every Poet Is Well Known; They Can Amaze Us Like A Thunderstorm, Or Die So Young, Or Live For Years Alone.

Man Desires To Be Free And He Desires To Feel Important. This Places Him In A Dilemma, For The More He Emancipates Himself From Necessity The Less Important He Feels.

My Poetry Doesn't Change From Place To Place - It Changes With The Years. It's Very Important To Be One's Age. You Get Ideas You Have To Turn Down - 'i'm Sorry, No Longer'; 'i'm Sorry, Not Yet.

Great Art Is Clear Thinking About Mixed Feelings.

Aside From Purely Technical Analysis, Nothing Can Be Said About Music, Except When It Is Bad; When It Is Good, One Can Only Listen And Be Grateful.

Literary Confessors Are Contemptible, Like Beggars Who Exhibit Their Sores For Money, But Not So Contemptible As The Public That Buys Their Books.

When I Am In The Company Of Scientists, I Feel Like A Shabby Curate Who Has Strayed By Mistake Into A Drawing Room Full Of Dukes.

Anyone Who Has A Child Today Should Train Him To Be Either A Physicist Or A Ballet Dancer. Then He'll Escape.

Human Language Is Mythological And Metaphorical By Nature.

If It Really Was Queen Elizabeth Who Demanded To See Falstaff In A Comedy, Then She Showed Herself A Very Perceptive Critic. But Even In The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Falstaff Has Not And Could Not Have Found His True Home Because Shakespeare Was Only A Poet. For That He Was To Wait Nearly Two Hundred Years Till Verdi Wrote His Last Opera. Falstaff Is Not The Only Case Of A Character Whose True Home Is The World Of Music; Others Are Tristan, Isolde And Don Giovanni.

In Times Of Joy, All Of Us Wished We Possessed A Tail We Could Wag.

A Writer Is A Maker, Not A Man Of Action: His Private Life Is Of No Concern To Anybody But Himself, His Family And His Friends.

I'll Love You, Dear, I'll Love You Till China And Africa Meet And The River Jumps Over The Mountain And The Salmon Sing In The Street.

The Most Difficult Problem In Personal Knowledge, Whether Of Oneself Or Of Others, Is The Problem Of Guessing When To Think As A Historian And When To Think As An Anthropologist.

Personal Knowledge

Why Doesn't The United States Take Over The Monarchy And Unite With England? England Does Have Important Assets. Naturally The Longer You Wait, The More They Will Dwindle. At Least You Could Use It For A Summer Resort Instead Of Maine.

The Belief That Politics Can Be Scientific Must Inevitably Produce Tyrannies. Politics Cannot Be A Science, Because In Politics Theory And Practice Cannot Be Separated, And The Sciences Depend Upon Their Separation. Empirical Politics Must Be Kept In Bounds By Democratic Institutions, Which Leave It Up To The Subjects Of The Experiment To Say Whether It Shall Be Tried, And To Stop It If They Dislike It, Because, In Politics, There Is A Distinction, Unknown To Science, Between Truth And Justice.

To Be Happy Means To Be Free, Not From Pain Or Fear, But From Care Or Anxiety.

The Words Of A Dead Man Are Modified In The Guts Of The Living.

The Law Cannot Forgive, For The Law Has Not Been Wronged, Only Broken; Only Persons Can Be Wronged. The Law Can Pardon, But It Can Only Pardon What It Has The Power To Punish.

Most Poetry Is The Utterance Of A Man In Some State Of Passion, Love, Joy, Grief, Rage, Etc., And No Doubt This Is As It Should Be. But No Man Is Perpetually In A Passion And Those States In Which He Is Amused And Amusing, Detached And Irreverent, If Less Important, Are No Less Amusing. If There Were No Poets Who, Like Byron, Express These States, Poetry Would Lack Something.

Beloved, We Are Always In The Wrong, Handling So Clumsily Our Stupid Lives, Suffering Too Little Or Too Long, Too Careful Even In Our Selfish Loves: The Decorative Manias We Obey Die In Grimaces Round Us Every Day, Yet Through Their Tohu-bohu Comes A Voice Which Utters An Absurd Command - Rejoice.

Private Faces In Public Places Are Wiser And Nicer Than Public Faces In Private Places.

Drama Began As The Act Of A Whole Community. Ideally, There Would Be No Speculators. In Practice, Every Member Of The Audience Should Feel Like An Understudy.

The Sky Is Darkening Like A Stain Something Is Going To Fall Like Rain And It Won't Be Flowers

Every American Poet Feels That The Whole Responsibility For Contemporary Poetry Has Fallen Upon His Shoulders, That He Is A Literary Aristocracy Of One.

God Is Love, We Are Taught As Children To Believe. But When We First Begin To Get Some Inkling Of How He Loves Us, We Are Repelled; It Seems So Cold, Indeed, Not Love At All As We Understand The Word.

There Are Not Many English Novels Which Deserve To Be Called Great: Parade's End Is One Of Them.

Of All Possible Subjects, Travel Is The Most Difficult For An Artist, As It Is The Easiest For A Journalist.

There Is No Love; There Are Only The Various Envies, All Of Them Sad.

It's Frightfully Important For A Writer To Be His Age, Not To Be Younger Or Older Than He Is. One Might Ask, "what Should I Write At The Age Of Sixty-four," But Never, "what Should I Write In 1940."

Music Can Be Made Anywhere, Is Invisible And Does Not Smell.

Let Me See What I Wrote So I Know What I Think

A Shilling Life Will Give You All The Facts.

We Honor Founders Of These Starving Cities, Whose Honor Is The Image Of Our Sorrow.

Like Love We Don't Know Where Or Why Like Love We Cant Compel Or Fly Like Love We Often Weep Like Love We Seldom Keep

I See Little Hope For A Peaceful World Until Men Are Excluded From The Realm Of Foreign Policy Altogether And All Decisions Concerning International Relations Are Reserved For Women, Preferably Married Ones.

To Me Art's Subject Is The Human Clay, / And Landscape But A Background To A Torso; / All Cezanne's Apples I Would Give Away / For One Small Goya Or A Daumier.

Detective Stories Have Nothing To Do With Works Of Art.

In Addition To English, At Least One Ancient Language, Probably Greek Or Hebrew, And Two Modern Languages Would Be Required.

All Poets Adore Explosions, Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Conflagrations, Ruins, Scenes Of Spectacular Carnage. The Poetic Imagination Is Not At All A Desirable Quality In A Statesman.

Among Those Whom I Like Or Admire, I Can Find No Common Denominator, But Among Those Whom I Love, I Can: All Of Them Make Me Laugh.

To Be Free Is Often To Be Lonely.

Health Is The State About Which Medicine Has Nothing To Say.

The Ear Tends To Be Lazy, Craves The Familiar And Is Shocked By The Unexpected; The Eye, On The Other Hand, Tends To Be Impatient, Craves The Novel And Is Bored By Repetition.

Desire, Even In Its Wildest Tantrums, Can Neither Persuade Me It Is Love Nor Stop Me From Wishing It Were.

Art Is Our Chief Means Of Breaking Bread With The Dead.

Breaking Silence

In The Deserts Of The Heart Let The Healing Fountain Start.

The Image Of Myself Which I Try To Create In My Own Mind In Order That I May Love Myself Is Very Different From The Image Which I Try To Create In The Minds Of Others In Order That They May Love Me.

Before People Complain Of The Obscurity Of Modern Poetry, They Should First Examine Their Consciences And Ask Themselves With How Many People And On How Many Occasions They Have Genuinely And Profoundly Shared Some Experience With Another...

To Save Your World You Asked This Man To Die; Would This Man, Could He See You Now, Ask Why?

All The Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

I Think The First Prerequisite To Civilization Is An Ability To Make Polite Conversation.

Hunger Allows No Choice.

The Desires Of The Heart Are As Crooked As Corkscrews Not To Be Born Is The Best For Man The Second Best Is A Formal Order The Dance's Pattern, Dance While You Can. Dance, Dance, For The Figure Is Easy The Tune Is Catching And Will Not Stop Dance Till The Stars Come Down From The Rafters Dance, Dance, Dance Till You Drop.

Machines Are Beneficial To The Degree That They Eliminate The Need For Labor, Harmful To The Degree That They Eliminate The Need For Skill.

I Don't Think The Mystical Experience Can Be Verbalized. When The Ego Disappears, So Does Power Over Language.

Mystical Experiences

There's Always Another Story. There's More Than Meets The Eye.

More Than Meets The Eye

No Person Can Be A Great Leader Unless He Takes Genuine Joy In The Successes Of Those Under Him.

If Music In General Is An Imitation Of History, Opera In Particular Is An Imitation Of Human Willfulness; It Is Rooted In The Fact That We Not Only Have Feelings But Insist Upon Having Them At Whatever Cost To Ourselves. The Quality Common To All The Great Operatic Roles, E.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, Is That Each Of Them Is A Passionate And Willful State Of Being. In Real Life They Would All Be Bores, Even Don Giovanni.

Few Can Remember Clearly When Innocence Came To A Sudden End, The Moment At Which We Ask For The First Time: Am I Loved?

Happy The Hare At Morning, For She Cannot Read The Hunter's Waking Thoughts.

The Camera May Do Justice To Laughter, But Must Degrade Sorrow.

Let Us Honor If We Can The Vertical Man, Though We Value None But The Horizontal One

How Happy Is The Lot Of The Mathematician! He Is Judged Solely By His Peers, And The Standard Is So High That No Colleague Or Rival Can Ever Win A Reputation He Does Not Deserve. No Cashier Writes A Letter To The Press Complaining About The Incomprehensibility Of Modern Mathematics And Comparing It Unfavorably With The Good Old Days When Mathematicians Were Content To Paper Irregularly Shaped Rooms And Fill Bathtubs Without Closing The Waste Pipe.

Our Researchers Into Public Opinion Are Content That He Held The Proper Opinions For The Time Of Year; When There Was Peace, He Was For Peace: When There Was War, He Went. He Was Married And Added Five Children To The Population, Which Our Eugenist Says Was The Right Number For A Parent Of His Generation, And Our Teachers Report That He Never Interfered With Their Education. Was He Free? Was He Happy? The Question Is Absurd: Had Everything Been Wrong, We Should Certainly Have Heard.

Now The Leaves Are Falling Fast, Nurse's Flowers Will Not Last; Nurses To Their Graves Are Gone, And The Prams Go Rolling On.

A Poet's Hope: To Be, Like Some Valley Cheese, Local, But Prized Elsewhere.

To Read Is To Translate, For No Two Persons' Experiences Are The Same. A Bad Reader Is Like A Bad Translator: He Interprets Literally When He Ought To Paraphrase And Paraphrases When He Ought To Interpret Literally.

Water Is The Soul Of The Earth.

But Once In A While The Odd Thing Happens Once In A While The Dream Comes True And The Whole Pattern Of Life Is Altered Once In A While, The Moon Turns Blue

In The Eyes Of Others A Man Is A Poet If He Has Written One Good Poem. In His Own He Is Only A Poet At The Moment When He Is Making His Last Revision To A New Poem. The Moment Before, He Was Still Only A Potential Poet; The Moment After, He Is A Man Who Has Ceased To Write Poetry, Perhaps Forever.

O Plunge Your Hands In Water, Plunge Them In Up To The Wrist; Stare, Stare In The Basin And Wonder What You've Missed.

A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods

A Tremendous Number Of People In America Work Very Hard At Something That Bores Them. Even A Rich Man Thinks He Has To Go Down To The Office Everyday. Not Because He Likes It But Because He Can't Think Of Anything Else To Do.

In Relation To A Writer, Most Readers Believe In The Double Standard: They May Be Unfaithful To Him As Often As They Like, But He Must Never, Never Be Unfaithful To Them.

Double Standard

Dance Till The Stars Come Down From The Rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till You Drop.

One Of The Most Horrible, Yet Most Important, Discoveries Of Our Age Has Been That, If You Really Wish To Destroy A Person And Turn Him Into An Automaton, The Surest Method Is Not Physical Torture, In The Strict Sense, But Simply To Keep Him Awake, I.e., In An Existential Relation To Life Without Intermission.

Mad Ireland Hurt You Into Poetry.

Long Ago The Accusations Had Begun, And Suddenly Knew By Whom It Had Been Judged

Every Autobiography Is Concerned With Two Characters, A Don Quixote, The Ego, And A Sancho Panza, The Self.

I Will Love You Forever" Swears The Poet. I Find This Easy To Swear Too. "i Will Love You At 4:15 Pm Next Tuesday" - Is That Still As Easy?

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.

Narcissus Does Not Fall In Love With His Reflection Because It Is Beautiful, But Because It Is His. If It Were His Beauty That Enthralled Him, He Would Be Set Free In A Few Years By Its Fading.

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Richard Dean Anderson

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