Quotes by Philip Larkin

Id like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems

Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. Its terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I cant see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isnt as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isnt: its just a waste.

In life, as in art, talking vitiates doing.

When getting my nose in a bookCured most things short of school,It was worth ruining my eyesTo know I could still keep cool,And deal out the old right hookTo dirty dogs twice my size.Later, with inch-thick specs,Evil was just my lark:Me and my coat and fangsHad ripping times in the dark.The women I clubbed with sex!I broke them up like meringues.Dont read much now: the dudeWho lets the girl down beforeThe hero arrives, the chapWhos yellow and keeps the storeSeem far too familiar. Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.(A Study Of Reading Habits)

How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. Its sad, really.

Work is a kind of vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intelligence necessary to keep me going. God, the people are awful - great carved monstrosities from the sponge-stone of secondratedness. Hideous.

You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing in the evenings, certainly not spread rotten books around & dredge for a line. It must be like still being a student, with an essay to do after a weeks drinking, only you havent had the drinking. Quite clearly, to me, you arent a voluntary worker, from the will: you do it by intuitive flashes, more like an act of creation, & when the flashes dont come, as of course they dont, especially when the excess energy of undergraduate days is gone, then it is a hideous unnatural effort.

Maiden Name Marrying left your maiden name disused. Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, Your voice, and all your variants of grace; For since you were so thankfully confused By law with someone else, you cannot be Semantically the same as that young beauty: It was of her that these two words were used. Now its a phrase applicable to no one, Lying just where you left it, scattered through Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon - Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly. No, it means you. Or, since youre past and gone, It means what we feel now about you then: How beautiful you were, and near, and young, So vivid, you might still be there among Those first few days, unfingermarked again. So your old name shelters our faithfulness, Instead of losing shape and meaning less With your depreciating luggage laden.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.

Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on - in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,Its clear youre not the virtuous sort.

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. Its very strange how often strong feelings dont seem to carry any message of action.

Caught in the center of a soundless fieldWhile hot inexplicable hours go byWhat trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?You seem to ask.I make a sharp reply,Then clean my stick. Im glad I cant explainJust in what jaws you were to suppurate:You may have thought things would come right againIf you could only keep quite still and wait.

We should be carefulOf each other, we should be kindWhile there is still time

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I foundA hedgehog jammed up against the blades,Killed. It had been in the long grass.I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.Now I had mauled its unobtrusive worldUnmendably. Burial was no help:Next morning I got up and it did not.The first day after a death, the new absenceIs always the same; we should be carefulOf each other, we should be kindWhile there is still time.

If grief could burn outLike a sunken coal,The heart would rest quiet, The unrent soulBe still as a veil; But I have watched all nightThe fire grow silent, The grey ash soft:And I stir the stubborn flintThe flames have left, And grief stirs, and the deftHeart lies impotent.

Most things may never happen: this one will.

Strange to know nothing, never to be sureOf what is true or right or real,But forced to qualify or so I feel,Or Well, it does seem so:Someone must know.Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:Their skill at finding what they need,Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,And willingness to change;Yes, it is strange,Even to wear such knowledge--for our fleshSurrounds us with its own decisions--and yet spend all our life on imprecisions,That when we start to dieHave no idea why.

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.

When I was a child, I thought,Casually, that solitudeNever needed to be sought.Something everybody had,Like nakedness, it lay at hand,Not specially right or specially wrong,A plentiful and obvious thingNot at all hard to understand.Then, after twenty, it becameAt once more difficult to getAnd more desired -- though all the sameMore undesirable; for whatYou are alone has, to achieveThe rank of fact, to be expressedIn terms of others, or its justA compensating make-believe.Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on -- in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,Its clear youre not the virtuous sort.Viciously, then, I lock my door.The gas-fire breathes. The wind outsideUshers in evening rain. Once moreUncontradicting solitudeSupports me on its giant palm;And like a sea-anemoneOr simple snail, there cautiouslyUnfolds, emerges, what