Quotes About W.H. Auden

The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

I'm trying to create a collection of stories - the 'U.F.O.W.A.V.E.' songs are all stories. I haven't really taken direct lyrical influence from other songwriters, but my dad bought me a book of W.H. Auden's poems when I was younger, and the imagery really interested me.

O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.

If you want romance, fuck a journalist.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

When I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

And over the talkative city like any other Weep the non-attached angels