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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.

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
Somebody
Came
Cushion
Better
Cushions
Much
Sinful
Think
Subversive
Thinking
Regarded
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Poetry

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
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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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I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.
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Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
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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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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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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Philip Larkin
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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.
Philip Larkin
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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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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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Philip Larkin
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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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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.
Philip Larkin