Quotes from Philip Larkin

I suppose if one lives to be old, one's entire waking life will be spent turning on the spit of recollection over the fires of mingled shame, pain or remorse. Cheerful prospect!

If grief could burn out Like a sunken coal, The heart would rest quiet, The unrent soul Be still as a veil; But I have watched all night The fire grow silent, The grey ash soft: And I stir the stubborn flint The flames have left, And grief stirs, and the deft Heart lies impotent.

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.

Men whose first coronary is coming like Christmas; who drift, loaded helplessly with commitments and obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age and incapacity, deserted by everything that once made life sweet. These I have tried to remind of the excitement of jazz and tell where it may still be found.

The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough, Is having the blind persistence To upset an existence Just for your own sake. What cheek it must take.

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

I would not dare Console you if I could. What can be said, Except that suffering is exact, but where Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage. Then there will be nothing I know. My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.

They say eyes clear with age, As dew clarifies air To sharpen evenings, As if time put an edge Round the last shape of things To show them there; The many-levelled trees, The long soft tides of grass Wrinkling away the gold Wind-ridden waves- all these, They say, come back to focus As we grow old. - Long Sight In Age

Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things.

It never worked for me. Something to do with violence A long way back, and wrong rewards, And arrogant eternity.

Ought we to smile / Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats / You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while.

It's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our one's hypocrisies at the top of one's voice, thick skinned as a rhino. At least I do.

Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of 'ideal' poems that one feels ought to be written, but don't because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A 'real' poem is a pleasure to write.

And I am sick for want of sleep; So sick, that I can half-believe The soundless river pouring from the cave Is neither strong nor deep; Only an image fancied in conceit.

Poetry is emotional in nature and theatrical in operation.

Caught in the center of a soundless field While hot inexplicable hours go by What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed? You seem to ask. I make a sharp reply, Then clean my stick. I'm glad I can't explain Just in what jaws you were to suppurate: You may have thought things would come right again If you could only keep quite still and wait.

A good meal can somewhat repair / The eatings of slight love

Living toys are something novel, But it soon wears off somehow.

There is bad in all good authors

Have I been wrong, to think the breath That sharpens life is life itself, not death?

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Most things are never meant. - Going, Going