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

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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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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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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.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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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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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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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
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.
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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
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The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.
Philip Larkin
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
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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