Author: W. H. Auden

Cited by

• Aaron Soon Yong Lee (1)
  • IN: Coastlands (2014) Poetry, Singaporean
    EPIGRAPH: Now throught night's caressing grip Earth and all her oceans slip, Capes of China slide away From her fingers into day And th'Americas incline Coasts towards her shadow line.
    FROM: Nocturne, (1951), Poem, UK
• Ian McEwan (1)
  • IN: Amsterdam (1998) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The friends who met here and embraced are gone, / Each to his own mistake
    FROM: The Crossroads in "The Quest", (1941), Poem, UK
• Edward Lear (1)
  • IN: The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse (None) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Left by his friend to breakfast alone on the white Italian shore, his Terrible Demon arose Over his shoulder; he wept to himself in the night, A dirty landscape-painter who hated his nose. The legions of cruel inquisitive They Were so many and big like dogs; he was upset By Germans and boats; affection was miles away; But guided by tears his successfully reached his Regret. How prodigious the welcome was. Flowers took his hat And bore him off to introduce him to the tongs; The demon's false nose made the table laugh; a cat Soon had him waltzing madly, let him squeeze her hand, Words pushed him to the piano to sing comic songs. And children swarmed to him like seeders. He became a land.
    FROM: Edward Lear, (1939), Poem, England/ US
• Cecil Rajendra (1)
  • IN: Refugees and Other Despairs (1980) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Or Eros and of dust, Beleauguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
    FROM: The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden, (1945), Poem, England/US
• Nam Le (1)
  • IN: The Boat (2008) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: Importunate along the dark Horizon of immediacies The flares of desperation rise.
    FROM: New Year Letter, (1941), Poem, England/US
• Stephen Spender (1)
  • IN: The Temple (1988) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Came summer like a flood, did never greediest gardeneer Make blossoms flusher: Sunday meant lakes for many, a browner body, Beauty from burning: Far out in the water two heads discussed the position, Out of the reeds like a fowl jumped the undressed German, And Stephen signalled from the sand dunes like a wooden madman 'Destroy this temple.' It did fall. The quick hare died to the hounds' hot breathing, The Jewes fled Southwards
    FROM: first of Six Odes, (1932), Poem, England/US
• Roy Fuller (1)
  • IN: The Ruined Boys (1959) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Seekers after happiness, all who follow The convolutions of your simple wish, It is later than you think; nearer that day For other than that distant afternoon Amid rustle of frocks and stamping feet They gave the prize to the ruined boys.
    FROM: Consider this and in our Time, (1930), Poem, England/US
• Tasha Alexander (1)
  • IN: A Poisoned Season (2007) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend; Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire. Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye. For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall, The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall, The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss, There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.
    FROM: At Last the Secret is Out, (None), Poem, England/US
• Russell Hoban (1)
  • IN: Fremder (1996) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Once we had a country and we thought it fair, look in the atlas and you'll find it there: We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
    FROM: Songs and other Musical Pieces, (1955), NULL, England/US
• Margo Rabb (1)
  • IN: Kissing in America (2015) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.
    FROM: O Tell Me the Truth About Love, (1938), Poem, England/US
• Estelle Laure (1)
  • IN: But Then I Came Back (2017) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear: Although I love you, you will have to leap; Our dream of safety has to disappear.
    FROM: "Leap Before You Look", (1940), Poem, US/England
• James Preller (1)
  • IN: Before You Go (2012) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.
    FROM: Funeral Blues, (1938), NULL, England/US
• Lawrence Block (1)
  • IN: Out on the Cutting Edge (1989) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odor of death Offends the September night…
    FROM: "September 1, 1939", (1939), Poem, England/US
• T. C. Boyle (1)
  • IN: San Miguel (2012) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
    FROM: Musee Des Beau Arts, (1939), Poem, England/US
• Jo Walton (1)
  • IN: Farthing (2006) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.
    FROM: Lullaby (Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love), (1937), Poem, England/US
• Linda Fairstein (2)
  • IN: Terminal City (2014) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Good can imagine Evil, but Evil cannot imagine Good.
    FROM: A Certain World, (1970), Book, England/US
  • IN: Night Watch (2012) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
    FROM: Herman Melville, (1939), Poem, US/England
• John Connolly (1)
  • IN: Dark Hollow (2000) Fiction, Irish
    EPIGRAPH: Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, Dreading to find its Father.
    FROM: For the Time Being, (1944), Poem, UK
• Rachael Herron (1)
  • IN: Pack Up the Moon (2014) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
    FROM: Funeral Blues, (1938), Poem, England/US
• Mary Gaitskill (1)
  • IN: Bad Behavior (1988) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
    FROM: 1939-09-01 00:00:00, (1940), Poem, England/US
• James Ellroy (1)
  • IN: Because the night (1984) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I must take charge of the liquid fire, and storm the cities of human desire -
    FROM: Dance of Death, (1933), Play, England/US
• Yiyun Li (1)
  • IN: The Vagrants (2009) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes liked to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.
    FROM: The Shield of Achilles, (1952), Poem, UK
• Stephen King (1)
  • IN: Cujo (1981) Fiction, Psychological Horror, American
    EPIGRAPH: About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .
    FROM: Musee des Beaux Arts, (1939), Poem, England/US
• Ed Gorman (1)
  • IN: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others.
    FROM: The Sea and the Mirror, (1944), Poem, US/England
• Robert Silverberg (1)
  • IN: The Time Hoppers (1967) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: One can conceive of Heaven having a Telephone Directory,-but it would have to be gigantic, for it would include the Proper Name and address of every electron in the universe. But Hell could not have one, for in Hell, as in prison and the army, its inhabitants are identified not by name but by number. They do not have numbers, they are numbers.
    FROM: Infernal Science, (1962), NULL, US/England
• Con Lehane (1)
  • IN: Murder At the 42nd Street Library (2016) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
    FROM: September 1, 1939, (1939), Poem, US/England
• Cyril Wong (1)
  • IN: Let Me Tell You Something About That Night (2009) Fiction, Singaporean
    EPIGRAPH: The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US/England
• Elizabeth Hand (2)
  • IN: Winterlong (1990) Speculative fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: We know without knowing there is reason for what we bear … Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare, We are not to despair.
    FROM: The Complete Works of W. H. Auden, Volume VI: Prose: 1969-1973, (2015), Book, US/England
  • IN: Glimmering (1997) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Four voices just audible in the hush of any Christmas: Accept my friendship or die. I shall keep order and not very much will happen. Bring me luck and of course I’ll support you. I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
    FROM: Blessed Event, (1939), Poem, US/England
• Xiao Bai (2)
  • IN: French Concession (2015) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: And walked like an assasin through the town, And looked at men and did not like them, But trembled if one passed him with a frown.
    FROM: In Time of War: A Sonnet Sequence with a Verse Commentary, (1939), Poem, US/England
• Susan Vreeland (1)
  • IN: The Passion of Artemisia (2002) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
    FROM: Musee des Beaux Arts, (1940), Poem, US/England
• David Leavitt (1)
  • IN: Equal Affections (1989) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
    FROM: The More Loving One, (1957), Poem, US/England
• Jon Land (1)
  • IN: Pandora's Temple (2012) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: No hero is immortal till he dies.
    FROM: A Short Ode to a Philologist, (1962), Poem, US/England
• Christopher Koch (1)
  • IN: The Memory Room (2007) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: Two friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake; one flashes on To fame and ruin in a rowdy lie, A village torpor holds the other one, Some local wrong where it takes time to die: This empty junction glitters in the sun. So at all quays and crossroad: who can tell These places of decision and farewell To what dishonour all adventure leads, What parting gift could give that friend protection, So orientated his vocation needs The Bad Lands and the sinister direction?
    FROM: The Crossroads, (1941), Poem, US/England
• Ashley Hay (1)
  • IN: The Body in the Clouds (2010) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: ... In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely ... the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
    FROM: "Musée des Beaux Arts", (1939), Poem, England/ US
• Xiaolu Guo (1)
  • IN: I Am China (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street.
    FROM: "As I Walked Out One Evening", (1937), Poem, US/England
• Anna Funder (1)
  • IN: All That I Am (2011) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: Dear Ernst, lie shadowless at last among The other war-horses who existed till they'd done Something that was an example to the young.
    FROM: In Memory of Ernst Toller, (1939), NULL, US/England
• Amanda Craig (1)
  • IN: The Lie of the Land (2017) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Like everything else which is not the 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.
    FROM: A Certain World, (1970), Book, UK
• Ben Coens (1)
  • IN: Independence Day (2015) NULL, American
    EPIGRAPH: When the green field comes off like a lid Revealing what was much better hid-- Unpleasant: And look, behind you without a sound The woods have come up and are standing round In deadly crescent. The bolt is sliding in its groove: Outside the window is the black remov- ers' van: And now with sudden swift emergence Come the hooded women, the hump-backed surgeons And the Scissor Man.
    FROM: The Witnesses, (1932), Poem, US/England
• Lea Carpenter (1)
  • IN: Eleven Days (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed citites And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.
    FROM: "The Shield of Achilles", (1952), Poem, US/England
• Naomi Aldermann (1)
  • IN: The Liars Gospel (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure.
    FROM: Musée des Beaux Arts, (1939), Poem, UK
• A.S. Byatt (1)
  • IN: Babel Tower (None) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Her Telepathic-Station transmits thought-waves the second-rate, the bored, the disappointed, and any of us when tired or uneasy, are tuned to receive. So, though unlisted in atlas or phone-book, Her garden is easy to find. In no time one reaches the gate over which is written large: MAKE LOVE NOT WAR. * She does not brutalise Her victims(beasts could bite or bolt), She simplifies them to flowers, sessile fatalists who don't mind and only can talk to themselves. All but a privileged Few, the elite She guides to Her secret Citadel, the Tower where a laught is forbidden and DO HARM AS THOU WILT is the Law. Dear little not-so-innocents, beware of Old Grandmother Spider; rump her endearments. She's not quite as nice as She looks, nor you quite as tough as you think.
    FROM: Circe, (1969), ***Poem, England/US
• John Mortimer (1)
  • IN: Paradise Postponed (1985) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: In the houses The little pianos are closed, and a clock strikes. And all sway forward on the dangerous flood Of history, that never sleeps or dies, And, held one moment, burns the hand.
    FROM: Look Stranger, XXX, (1936), Poem, US/England
• Richard Yates (1)
  • IN: A Special Providence (1965) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
    FROM: We are Lived by Powers we Pretend to Understand, (1940), Poem, UK
• Ben Coes (1)
  • IN: A Day to Kill (2015) Fiction, Mystery Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: When the green field comes off like a lid, Revealing what was much better hid - Unpleasant: And look, behind you without a sound The woods have come up and are standing round In deadly crescent. The bolt is sliding in its groove; Outside the window is the black remov- -ers' van; And now with sudden swift emergence Come the hooded women, the hump-backed surgeons, And the Scissor Man.
    FROM: "The Witnesses", (1932), Poem, UK
• Neal Ascherson (1)
  • IN: The Death of the Fronsac (2017) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: ...Home. A sort of honour, not a building site, Wherever we are, when, if we chose, we might Be somewhere else, but trust that we have chosen right.
    FROM: In War Time', (1945), Poem, UK
• Anthony Burgess (1)
  • IN: Tremor of Intent (1966) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: But between the day and night The choice is free to all, and light Falls equally on black and white.
    FROM: The Ascent of F6, (1936), Play, US/England
• Helen Dunmore (1)
  • IN: With Your Crooked Heart (1999) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.
    FROM: As I Walked Out One Evening', (1938), Poem, US/England
• Mary Gordon (1)
  • IN: The Company of Women (1980) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: What draws singular lives together in the first place, loneliness, lust, ambition, or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop or murder one another clear enough: how they create, though, a common world between them, like Bombelli's impossible yet useful numbers, no one has yet explained. Still, they do managed to forgive impossible behavior, to endure by some mircale conversational tics and larval habits without wincing... The ogre will come in any case: so Joyce has warned us. Howbeit, fasting or feasting, we both know this: without the Spirit we die, but life without the Letter is in the worst of taste, and always, though truth and love can never really differ, when they seem to, the subaltern should be truth.
    FROM: "The Common Life", (1963), Poem, US/England
• Nadine Gordimer (1)
  • IN: Get a Life (2005) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: O what authority gives Existence its surprise?
    FROM: "The Sea and the Mirror", (1944), Poem, US/England
• D. J. Taylor (1)
  • IN: The Windsor Faction (2013) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Always the following wind of history Of others' wisdom makes a bouyant air Till we come suddenly on pockets where Is nothing loud but us.
    FROM: Paid on Both Sides', (1930), Poem, US/England
• Antonia Hayes (1)
  • IN: Relativity (2015) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, NULL