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

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Philip Larkin
Age: 63 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 9
Died: 1985
Died: December 2
Critic
Journalist
Librarian
Music Critic
Music Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Philip Arthur Larkin
Almost
Survive
Suspended
Age
Smoke
Hollow
History
Instinct
Helpless
True
Stones
Hardly
Transfigured
Come
Meant
Stone
Trough
Time
Remains
Final
Finality
Love
Prove
Finals
Untruth
Attitude
Slow
Scrap

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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.
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I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.
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It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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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.
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
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It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin
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I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
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Life is first boredom, then fear.
Philip Larkin
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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But, o, photography! as no art is,Faithful and disappointing! That recordsDull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,And will not censor blemishes,Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards
Philip Larkin
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Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
Philip Larkin