Quote

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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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
Solitude
Rite
Despite
Costly
Eyes
Aversion
Artful
Eye
Oblivion
Rites
Desire
Insurance
Tensions
Death
Beneath
Calendar
Running
Runs
Fertility
Life
Tension
Calendars

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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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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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Any memory for the most part depending on chance.
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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.
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
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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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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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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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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.
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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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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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.
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
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