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.
W. H. AudenThe countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
W. H. AudenThe true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W. H. AudenOne demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden