Quotes by Philip Larkin

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike 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.

Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock....

The Old FoolsWhat do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this ? Do they somehow supposeIts more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and droolsAnd you keep on pissing yourself, and cant rememberWho called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ?Or do they fancy theres really been no change, And theyve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching light move ? If they dont (and they cant), its strange:Why arent they screaming ?At death, you break up: the bits that were youStart speeding away from each other for everWith no one to see. Its only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end,And was all the time merging with a unique endeavourTo bring to bloom the million-petalled flowerOf being here. Next time you cant pretendTherell be anything else. And these are the first signs:Not knowing how, not hearing who, the powerOf choosing gone. Their looks show that theyre for it:Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines-How can they ignore it ?Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet cant quite name; each loomsLike a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extractingA known book from the shelves; or sometimes onlyThe rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,The blown bush at the window, or the sun sFaint friendliness on the wall some lonelyRain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:Not here and now, but where all happened once.This is why they giveAn air of baffled absence, trying to be thereYet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leavingIncompetent cold, the constant wear and tearOf taken breath, and them crouching belowExtinction s alp, the old fools, never perceivingHow near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet.The peak that stays in view wherever we goFor them is rising ground. Can they never tellWhat is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night?Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughoutThe whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,We shall find out.

I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if youre an artist, by children if youre not.

When I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut youve always done what you want, You always get your way- A perfectly vile and foulInversion of all thats been.What the old ratbags meanIs Ive never done what I dont.So the shit in the shuttered chateauWho does his five hundred wordsThen parts out the rest of the dayBetween bathing and booze and birdsIs far off as ever, but soIs that spectacled schoolteaching sod(Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)...Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the worlds for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what youll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasisOf havings-to, fear, faces.Days sift down it constantly. Years.--The Life with the Hole in It

Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.

Dear, I cant write, its all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isnt true!

Saki says that youth is like hors doeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you dont notice it. When youve had them, you wish youd had more hors doeuvres.

Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this? Do they somehow supposeIts more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,And you keep on pissing yourself, and cant rememberWho called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?Or do they fancy theres really been no change,And theyve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching the light move? If they dont (and they cant), its strange; Why arent they screaming?

I am always trying to preserve things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.

Empty-page staring again tonight. Its maddening. I suppose people who dont write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I dont know. I cant do it. Its this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: whats the good of a talent if you cant do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldnt woodcarver? or a pianist who couldnt play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. Its more like a desire to separate a piece of ones 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.

Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of ideal poems that one feels ought to be written, but dont because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A real poem is a pleasure to write.

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that its quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the courage of love comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you dont believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)

SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.

Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriagesLasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.