"Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do."

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

“A literary Life" : a review of Stephen Spender: The Authorised Biography by John Sutherland in The Washington Post”

“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 stage-set of the Western front, with the complacency of the old at home, the staff officers behind the lines. In England there was violent anti-German feeling; but for the poet-soldiers the men in the trenches on both sides seemed united in pacific feelings and hatred of those at home who had sent them out to kill each other.”

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

“Audio interview with Dick Cavett, at Paris Review”

“History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.”