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Quotes by W H Auden

'But if a stranger in a train asks me my occupation I never answer 'writer' for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer 'poetry' would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.'

'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.'

'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.'

'Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none is undeservedly remembered.’

‘A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.’

discussing literary biography

'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.'

'No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.'

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