What to leave out is the first thing the artist has to decide; a painter who held the mirror up to nature would spend his life on the leaves of one landscape. The work of art's fluctuating and idiosyncratic threshold of attention—the great things disregarded, the small things seized and dwelt on—is as much of a signature as anything in it.
The Profession of Poetry, p. 162 - Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
