Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

— Philip Larkin

Morning, noon & bloody night,

— Philip Larkin

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are, to recreate the familiar, eternalizing the poet's own perception in unique and original verbal form.

— Philip Larkin

What was the rock my gliding childhood struck, / And what bright unreal path has led me here?

— Philip Larkin

Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.

— Philip Larkin

If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first.

— Philip Larkin

to start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

— Philip Larkin

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

— Philip Larkin

You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.

— Philip Larkin

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

— Philip Larkin

The first day after a death, the new absence While there is still time.

— Philip Larkin

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

— Philip Larkin

But, o, photography! as no art is,Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards

— Philip Larkin

And I, whose childhoodAnd starts to be happy.

— Philip Larkin

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-No waters breed or break.

— Philip Larkin

Our almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.

— Philip Larkin

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,It had not done so then, and could not now.

— Philip Larkin

Get stewed:Books are a load of crap.

— Philip Larkin

Never such innocence,Never such innocence again.

— Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   And add some extra, just for you.

— Philip Larkin

But they were fucked up in their turn   And half at one another's throats.

— Philip Larkin

Man hands on misery to man.   And don't have any kids yourself.

— Philip Larkin

What do they think has happened, the old fools,

— Philip Larkin

Most things may never happen: this one will.

— Philip Larkin

Always too eager for the future, we

— Philip Larkin

Days

— Philip Larkin

Time has transfigured them into

— Philip Larkin

Since the majority of me

— Philip Larkin

Uncontradicting solitude

— Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

— Philip Larkin

Time has transfigured them into

— Philip Larkin

So many things I had thought forgotten

— Philip Larkin

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

— Philip Larkin

Only in books the flat and final happens,

— Philip Larkin

What will survive of us is love.

— Philip Larkin

Always too eager for the future, we

— Philip Larkin

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.

— Philip Larkin

Time has transfigured them into

— Philip Larkin

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands

— Philip Larkin

They say eyes clear with age.

— Philip Larkin

I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.

— Philip Larkin

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

— Philip Larkin