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Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about.

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
Things
Tougher
Respond
Mess
However
Earth
Always

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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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.
Philip Larkin
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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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
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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.
Philip Larkin
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
Philip Larkin
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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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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
Philip Larkin
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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.
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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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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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
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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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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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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I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
Philip Larkin
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
Philip Larkin
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I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.
Philip Larkin