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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.

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
Warm
Loved
Write
Must
Writing
Feds
Sober

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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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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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
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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.
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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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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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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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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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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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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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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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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
Philip Larkin