“I have started to say "A quarter of a century" Or "thirty years back" About my own life.”
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Famous Philip Larkin Quotes
Source: Collected Poems
Source: Collected Poems
“It's easy to write when you've nothing to write about (That is, when you are young).”
“Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are.”
Source: Collected Poems
“Walk with the dead For fear of death.”
Source: Collected Poems
“The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.”
Source: Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982
“Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.”
Source: Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis
Source: Collected Poems
Source: The Less Deceived
“Clearly money has something to do with life.”
Source: Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis
“... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.”
Source: Collected Poems
“No one can tear your thread out of himself. No one can tie you down or set you free.”
Source: Collected Poems
“Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about.”
Source: Collected Poems
“Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.”
Source: The Whitsun Weddings
“Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.”
Source: The Whitsun Weddings
“Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.”
“In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.”
Source: The Whitsun Weddings
Source: Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982
“A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him.”
Source: Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982
Source: The Whitsun Weddings
“I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.”
Source: Philip Larkin: the man and his work
“I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.”
Source: Philip Larkin: the man and his work
“Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.”
Source: Collected Poems
Source: The Whitsun Weddings
“I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems”
Source: Collected Poems
“On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.”
Source: The Whitsun Weddings