Quote

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.

W. H. Auden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Never
Writer
Asks
Four
Age
Write
Frightfully
Might
Sixty
Important
Younger
Writing
Older

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
W. H. Auden
Image
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
W. H. Auden
Image
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. Auden
Image
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
W. H. Auden
Image
Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
Image
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W. H. Auden
Image
A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
Hunger allows no choice.
W. H. Auden
Image
The 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. Auden
Image
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
W. H. Auden
Image
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden
Image
So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
W. H. Auden
Image
The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
W. H. Auden
Image
Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
W. H. Auden
Image
To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
W. H. Auden
Image
Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
W. H. Auden
Image
We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
W. H. Auden