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

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
Novel
Seems
Broader
Writing
Richer
Enjoyable
Poems
Novels
Deeper
Seem

More quotes by 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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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
Philip Larkin
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
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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.
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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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
Philip Larkin
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.
Philip Larkin
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I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.
Philip Larkin
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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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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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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
Philip Larkin
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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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Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
Philip Larkin
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin