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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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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
Quality
Vain
Expense
Spiritual
Mental
Normally
Human
Machines
Expenses
Humans
Fruit
Odds
Much
Victory
Represent
Think
Beginning
Qualities
Alignment
Thinking
Imagination
Rare
Victories
Quite
Machine
Separated

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Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
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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.
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One of the sadder things, I think, Is how our birthdays slowly sink: Presents and parties disappear, The cards grow fewer year by year, Till, when one reaches sixty-five, How many care we're still alive?
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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.
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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.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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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.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous, Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water, Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter And those she has least use for see her best, Their paths grown craven and circuitous, Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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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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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
Philip Larkin
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
Philip Larkin
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
Philip Larkin
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin