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

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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
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Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
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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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Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
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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.
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My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
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I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.
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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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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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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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Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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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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What are days for? Days are where we live.
Philip Larkin
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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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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
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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
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I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
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The breath that sharpens life is life itself.
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin