采访者：你有信用卡吗？
奥登：有一张。只要能不用我就绝不用。我只用过一次，那是在以色列，我拿它付的宾馆的房费。我从小所受的教育让我相信，你不应该买你付不起现金的东西。一想到欠债就让我坐立不安。我想，要是每个人都受过像我这样的教育，我们的整个经济将会崩溃。
INTERVIEWER
Do you own any credit cards?
AUDEN
One. I never use it if I can help it. I've used it only once,
in Israel, to pay a hotel bill. I was brought up believing that you
should not buy anything you cannot pay cash for. The idea of debt
appalls me. I suppose our whole economy would collapse if everyone
had been brought up like me.
Try to think of each poem as a letter written to an intimate
friend, not always the same friend. But the letter is going to be
opened by the postal authorities, and if they do not understand
anything, or find it difficult to wade through, then the poem
fails.
试着把每一首诗想象为写给好友的一封信，不是总是同一位朋友。但是这封信是会被邮政当局打开的，假如他们一个字都看不懂，或者觉得要看完这封信是件很吃力的事情，那么这首诗就不及格。
奥登对大学生如是说：
Distrust unpunctual men and punctual women.
（别信任不守时的男人和守时的女人。）
Distrust tidy men and untidy women.
（别信任衣冠整洁的男人和衣冠不整的女人。）
Don't wash too much.
（别洗得太勤。）
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