We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
— W. H. Auden
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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.
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
Now is the age of anxiety.
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
No hero is mortal till he dies.
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
