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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.

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
Trying
Honour
Good
Bound
Bounds
Decide
Poetry
Instead
Intellectually
Write
Fatal
Writing
Poems

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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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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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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.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
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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?
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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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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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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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.
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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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