W. H. Auden

“A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”

“Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.”

“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.”

“A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.”

“Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.”

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”

“It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.”

“It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.”

“A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.”

“A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.”

“You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.”

“Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.”

“The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.”

“Learn from your dreams what you lack.”