Stephen Spender

"There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife."

"Stephen Spender, Toady: Was there any substance to his politics and art?" by Stephen Metcalf at Slate.com"

"Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of …"

"The immediate reaction of the poets who fought in the war was cynicism... The war dramatized for them the contrast between the still-idealistic young, living and dying on the unalteringly horrible sta…"

"Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direc…"

"History is the ship carrying living memories to the future."

"I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought t…"

"Death to the killers, bringing light to life."