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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

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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
Thinking
Hors
Like
Notice
Busy
Youth
Says
Courses
Wish
Next
Oeuvres

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
Philip Larkin
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin
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Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
Philip Larkin
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Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
Philip Larkin
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My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
Philip Larkin
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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
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
Philip Larkin
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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
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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
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One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
Philip Larkin
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Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
Philip Larkin
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
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Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
Philip Larkin
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Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick I don't care how you succeed, or What subject you pick.
Philip Larkin
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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
Philip Larkin
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Life is first boredom, then fear.
Philip Larkin
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
Philip Larkin