Philip Larkin Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.

  Philip Larkin

  Believe, Guiding Principles, People

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• I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.

  Philip Larkin

  Always Trying, People, Feels

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

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• The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

  Philip Larkin

  Grief, Years, Tree

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Poesía reunida”, p.217, LUMEN

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• I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, Subversive, Cushions

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• The difficult part of love
  Is being selfish enough.

  Philip Larkin

  Love, Selfish, Enough

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982”, p.48, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• I wonder love can have already set
  In dreams, when we've not met
  More times than I can number on one hand.

  Philip Larkin

  Love, Dream, Hands

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.25, Faber & Faber

  16 Copy quote

• SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.

  Philip Larkin

  Sex, People, Overcoming

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• Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
  Whatever they are.

  Philip Larkin

  Girl, Dream, Women

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.162, Faber & Faber

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• The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.

  Philip Larkin

  Work, Unemployment, Benefits

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• The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.

  Philip Larkin

  Ideas, Feelings, Desire

  4 Copy quote

• Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

  Philip Larkin

  Attitude, Age, Finals

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• Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

  Philip Larkin

  Thinking, Wish, Next

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

  17 Copy quote

• Things are tougher than we are, just
  As earth will always respond
  However we mess it about.

  Philip Larkin

  Earth, Mess

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.119, Faber & Faber

  28 Copy quote

• Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

  Philip Larkin

  Children, Growing Up, Simple

  13 Copy quote

• Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back

  Philip Larkin

  Home, Winning, Comfort

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Whitsun Weddings”, p.14, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

• My mother, who hates thunderstorms,
  Holds up each summer day and shakes
  It out suspiciously, lest swarms
  Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there.

  Philip Larkin

  Summer, Mother, Hate

  Philip Larkin, “Mother, Summer, I”

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• Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.

  Philip Larkin

  Work, Toads, Bills

  'Toads' (1955)

  4 Copy quote

• Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.

  Philip Larkin

  Dream, Book, Finals

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.144, Faber & Faber

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• Here is an unfenced existance

  Philip Larkin

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• No one can tear your thread out of himself.
  No one can tie you down or set you free.

  Philip Larkin

  Freedom, Self, Ties

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.154, Faber & Faber

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• I have wished you something None of the others would.

  Philip Larkin

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Less Deceived”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

  Philip Larkin

  Feels, Incompetent, New Places

  Letter to Winifred Arnott, October 7, 1953.

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• I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.

  Philip Larkin

  Food, Book, Eye

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• I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

  Philip Larkin

  Night, Drunk, Half

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis”, p.92, Faber & Faber

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• Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

  Philip Larkin

  Writing, Novel, Deeper

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982”, p.57, Faber & Faber

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