W. H. Auden Quotes
The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.
Quotes to Explore
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Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.
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The more I go on in this career of making albums, writing songs and playing music, the more I think of each album as a movie. I really wanted to make a film, but making a film is much more expensive than making a record.
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I love everything that's beautiful. A lot of things.
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Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
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The antagonisms between men and women express themselves in the most delicate phase of their life together - in their sexual relationship.
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The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.
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Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.
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The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies.
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I think as women, the smarter and more powerful we are, the more it can be threatening and alienating to other people, more than with men. That's something we need to support each other with.
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I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.
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As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.
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There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
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Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world.
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I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
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'Tryin' to Get the Feeling' has been a revelation. I'd forgotten how powerful that was. I'd forgotten how deep I can crawl into that one, and maybe because I'm older it means even more.
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Theater is where you go to find out something new that you don't know. It goes through somebody's brain and comes out in a comprehensible way that is beautiful, that's really interesting.
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It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
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When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.
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To me, it was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote.
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The judiciary is entitled to finally resolve a dispute. Not every decision is right.
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New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say.
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The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.
