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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

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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
Shall
Literature
Turd
Ever
Turds
Without
Thrills
Men
Foot
Life
Putting
Question
Feet

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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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
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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.
Philip Larkin
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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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In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.
Philip Larkin
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
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Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
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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?
Philip Larkin
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
Philip Larkin
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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
Philip Larkin
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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
Philip Larkin
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
Philip Larkin
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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
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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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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.
Philip Larkin
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
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.
Philip Larkin