Auden Quotes

Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.

I don't know," I said. "What else did you do for your first eighteen years?""Like I said," he said as I unlocked the car, "I'm not so sure that you should go by my example.""Why not?""Because I have my regrets," he said. "Also, I'm a guy. And guys do different stuff.""Like ride bikes?" I said."No," he replied. "Like have food fights. And break stuff. And set off firecrackers on people's front porches. And...""Girls can't set off firecrackers on people's front porches?""They can," he said... "But they're smart enough not to. That's the difference.

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

Helen Bevington

Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?"He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.

Stephen Greenblatt

There are good books which are only for adults.There are no good books which are only for children.