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

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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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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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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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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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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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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.
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Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
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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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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
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