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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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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
Thinking
West
Like
Writer
Pastoral
Rest
Bigots
Either
Coast
Full
Version
America
Versions
Ever
Desert
Think
East

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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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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Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.
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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.
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Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.
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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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My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
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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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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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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
Philip Larkin
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
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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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All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
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.
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Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
Philip Larkin
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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
Philip Larkin
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Parting is a training streamer,Lingering like leaves in autumn.
Philip Larkin
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Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
Philip Larkin
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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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