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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Much
Happen
Restraint
Easy
Frightening
Social
Holding
Happens
Commit
America
Scary
Anything
Murder
Back
England
Feels
Drink
Restraints

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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
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We must love one another or die
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Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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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.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
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Sincerity is technique.
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