They had a... dog called Bluey. A know psychopath, Bluey would attack himself if nothing else was available.

If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.

Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.

I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.

You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.

One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.