Quotes from Philip Larkin

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.

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.

Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.

I wonder love can have already set In dreams, when we've not met More times than I can number on one hand.

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

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.

In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.

The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.

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

On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.

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

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriagesLasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.

He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.

Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.

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?

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.

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are.

The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.

To put one brick upon another, Add a third, and then a fourth, Leaves no time to wonder whether What you do has any worth.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

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

Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's, and everybody else can fuck off.