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

Learn from your dreams what you lack.
W. H. Auden

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
W. H. Auden

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that "faith" is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
W. H. Auden

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
W. H. Auden

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
W. H. Auden

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
W. H. Auden

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden

No hero is mortal till he dies.
W. H. Auden

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
W. H. Auden

Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. Auden

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. Auden

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
W. H. Auden

Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. Auden

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. Auden