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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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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
Butterfly
Summer
Case
Died
Cases
Rich
Looks
Butterflies
Settled

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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.
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A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: The rest is a desert full of bigots. That's what I think I'd like . . . a version of pastoral.
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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.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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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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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
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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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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In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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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.
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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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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.
Philip Larkin
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
Philip Larkin
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The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.
Philip Larkin
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip Larkin
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
Philip Larkin
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin