Quote

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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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
Giving
Scale
Scales
Effect
Drinking
Musical
Chromatic
Effects
Enema
Use
Martini
Give
Simultaneously

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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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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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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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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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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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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.
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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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When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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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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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
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Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
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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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