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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.

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
Throw
Stamped
Poet
Envelope
Write
Envelopes
Tell
Aspiring
Two
Manuscripts
Self
Addressed
Writing
Poets
Things
Sent

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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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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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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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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
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In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
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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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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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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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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.
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.
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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.
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I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
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