Quote

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Philip Larkin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Drunk
Half
Night
Work

More quotes by Philip Larkin

Image
Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.
Philip Larkin
Image
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.
Philip Larkin
Image
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.
Philip Larkin
Image
I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
Philip Larkin
Image
The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
Philip Larkin
Image
To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
Image
Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
Image
He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
Image
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip Larkin
Image
It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin
Image
But, o, photography! as no art is,Faithful and disappointing! That recordsDull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,And will not censor blemishes,Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards
Philip Larkin
Image
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
Image
SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
Philip Larkin
Image
One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
Philip Larkin
Image
Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
Philip Larkin
Image
I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
Image
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.
Philip Larkin
Image
Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.
Philip Larkin
Image
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.
Philip Larkin
Image
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