If Wishes Were Stories, Beggars Would Read.

An Author Frequently Chooses Solemn Or Overwhelming Subjects To Write About; He Is So Impressed At Writing About Life And Death That He Does Not Notice That He Is Saying Nothing Of The Slightest Importance About Either.

One Of The Most Puzzling Things About A Novel Is That "the Way It Really Was" Half The Time Is, And Half The Time Isn't, The Way It Ought To Be In The Novel.

From My Mother's Sleep I Fell Into The State, And I Hunched In Its Belly Till My Wet Fur Froze. Six Miles From Earth, Loosed From The Dream Of Life, I Woke To Black Flak And The Nightmare Fighters. When I Died They Washed Me Out Of The Turret With A Hose.

If You Never Look Just Wrong To Your Contemporaries You Will Never Look Just Right To Posterity - Every Writer Has To Try To Be, To Some Extent, Sometimes, A Law Unto Himself.

There Are Some Good Things And Some Fantastic Ones In Auden's Early Attitude; If The Reader Calls It A Muddle I Shall Acquiesce, With The Remark That The Later Position Might Be Considered A More Rarefied Muddle. But Poets Rather Specialize In Muddles And I Have No Doubt Which Of The Muddles Was Better For Auden's Poetry: One Was Fertile And Usable, The Other Decidedly Is Not. Auden Sometimes Seems To Be Saying With Henry Clay, "i Had Rather Be Right Than Poetry"; But I Am Not Sure, Then, That He Is Either.