Philip Larkin quotes

Philip Larkin was an English poet, novelist, and librarian, highly regarded for his poignant and accessible poetry. His works often explore themes of everyday life, mortality, and the passage of time. He is considered one of the most influential British poets of the twentieth century. Here are 67 of his quotes:

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

Philip Larkin

Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.

Philip Larkin

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

Philip Larkin

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

Philip Larkin

What will survive of us is love. - from.

Philip Larkin

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

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

Philip Larkin

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.

Philip Larkin

But, o, photography! as no art is, Faithful and disappointing! That records Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds, And will not censor blemishes, Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards.

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

Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break.

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

Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.

Philip Larkin

Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word - the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

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

You can't put off being young until you retire.

Philip Larkin

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

Philip Larkin

Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.

Philip Larkin

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

Philip Larkin

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

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