W.H. Auden

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

Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
-W.H. Auden

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
-W.H. Auden

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. Auden