Philip Larkin quotes - page 3

I think ... someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. (Philip Larkin)

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?

Philip Larkin

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

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

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.

Philip Larkin

As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.

Philip Larkin

This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.

Philip Larkin

I didn't choose poetry: poetry chose me.

Philip Larkin

I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.

Philip Larkin

To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.

Philip Larkin

Life is first boredom, then fear. (Philip Larkin)

The breath that sharpens life is life itself.

Philip Larkin

Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.

Philip Larkin

Clearly money has something to do with life.

Philip Larkin

The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.

Philip Larkin

I think ... someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. And what's more, both sides would sooner have it that way than not at all. I wouldn't. And I suspect that means not that I can enjoy sex in my own quiet way but that I can't enjoy it at all. It's like rugby football: either you like kicking & being kicked, or your soul cringes away from the whole affair. There's no way of quietly enjoying rugby football.

Philip Larkin

But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats.

Philip Larkin

Previous
1
2
3 (Current)
Next

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin - Image

Photo: Humphrey Ocean, CC BY-SA 4.0

Occupation: English Writer
Born: August 9, 1922
Died: December 2, 1985
Quotes count: 67
Wikipedia: Philip Larkin

Related authors

Ted Hughes 61

English Poet

Thomas Hardy 208

English Novelist

Kingsley Amis 39

English Novelist

W. H. Auden 227

English Poet

Martin Amis 177

British Author

Seamus Heaney 69

Irish Poet

Louis MacNeice 21

Irish Poet

Andrew Marvell 38

English Poet

John Betjeman 34

English Poet

William Butler Yeats 381

Irish Poet