Quotes from Philip Larkin

Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(Which was rather late for me)—Between the end of the Chatterley banAnd the Beatles' first LP.

Marrying left your maiden name disused.

If I were called inTo construct a religionI should make use of water.

Why should I let the toad workSquat on my life?Can't I use my wit as a pitchforkAnd drive the brute off?

They say eyes clear with age.

One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys.

Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet can't quite name.

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.

Never such innocence again.

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.

I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.

Most things may never happen: this one will.

Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.

The breath that sharpens life is life itself.

The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time. From "The Mower

SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke... Is a reminder of the strength and pain Of being young; that it can't come again, But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

In times when nothing stood / but worsened, or grew strange / there was one constant good: / she did not change.

When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide

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.

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

On pillow after pillow lies The wild white hair and staring eyes; Jaws stand open; necks are stretched With every tendon sharply sketched; A bearded mouth talks silently To someone no one else can see. Sixty years ago they smiled At lover, husband, first-born child. Smiles are for youth. For old age come Death's terror and delirium. - Heads in the Women's Ward