Quotes from Philip Larkin

And you are pieced together bit by bit Set against the evening Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold. — Philip Larkin, from "(A Study in Light and Dark)," The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin , ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012)

Alone now, in my dark room, The pebbles cease to drop into the rocking pool And gradually the surface quietens Reflecting image of darkest peace and silence. No questions catch the clothes But only as it were a spreading Draws all threads to their finished pattern And you are pieced together bit by bit Set against the evening Lovely and glowing, like a chain of gold from "(A Study in Light and Dark)

On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City Is where your speech alone is understood

Days What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

At this unique distance from isolation it becomes still more difficult to find words at once true and kind, or not untrue and not unkind.

Truly, though our element is time, We are not suited to the long perspectives Open at each instant of our lives. They link us to our losses: worse, They show us what we have as it once was, Blindly undiminished, just as though By acting differently we could have kept it so. — Philip Larkin, from "Reference Back," The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin , ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012)

XVIII Si le chagrin pouvait Tel un charbon enfoui se consumer, Le cÅ"ur se reposerait calme, L'âme indéchirée serait Tranquille comme une voile ; Mais la nuit entière j'ai regardé Grandir du feu le silence, La cendre grise en douceur s'accroître : Et je remue le réfractaire silex Que délaissent les flammes dans l'âtre, Et le chagrin se remue, et le dextre CÅ"ur gît dans l'impuissance. (p. 31)

It had not done so then, and could not now

The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

How strange it is For the heart to be loveless, and as cold as these.

Behind the glass, underneath the cellophane, remains your final summer – sweet And meaningless, and not to come again.

What will survive of us is love.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. 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.

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: — Philip Larkin, from "Wants," The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin , ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012)

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.

Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning. Selfishness is like listening to good jazz With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.

My mother, who hates thunderstorms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there.

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.

Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself.

I didn't choose poetry: poetry chose me.

I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.