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One may list in an interminable description the objects that figured in the place described, but truth will begin only when the writer takes two different objects, establishes their relationship, and encloses them in the necessary rings of his style (art), or even when, like life itself, comparting similar qualities in two sensations, he makes their essential nature stand out clearly by joining them in a metaphor in order to remove them from the contingencies (the accidents) of time, and links them together by means of timeless words.

Proust quoted by Nabakov in Lectures on Lit p.211

As you know, my dominant faculties are intellect and intuition, my weak ones feeling and sensation. This means I have to approach life via the former; I must have knowledge and a great deal of it before I can feel anything. People imagine that I absorb things easily and quickly: this is true only in the most superficial way. On the contrary, I am really

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someone who has to grow very slowly; I develop slower than most people.

Auden in a letter to Spender - 1940 -p214 Auden by Osborne

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.

Montaigne

A book contains the history of a man, and fifty francs will earn a stranger right to take the shuddering city in his arms.

Brussles in Winter p.146 - Auden - Collected Poems

p.261 - Under Which Lyre - Auden