...how poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t” — is … - Randall Jarrell

It is rare for a novel to have an ending as good as its middle and beginning...

Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think twice about anything. His works are the mad scene from Giselle, on ice skates: he weeps, pulls out his hair — holding his wrists like Lifar — and tells you what Life is, all at a gliding forty miles an hour.

Auden is able to set up a We (whom he identifies himself with — rejection loves company) in opposition to the enemy They...