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Philip Larkin Quotes

Philip Larkin quotes

English Poet August 9, 1922 – December 2, 1985

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Quotes

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. Philip Larkin
Work is a kind of vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intelligence necessary to keep me going. God, the people are awful - great carved monstrosities from the sponge-stone of secondratedness. Hideous. Philip Larkin
Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr. Philip Larkin
Morning, noon & bloody night, Seven sodding days a week, I slave at filthy WORK, that might. Be done by any book-drunk freak. This goes on until I kick the bucket. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT Philip Larkin
...he [Samuel Butler] made a practise of doing the forks last when washing up, on the grounds that he might die before he got to them. This is very much his principle of 'eating the grapes downwards', so that however many grapes you have eaten the next is always the best of the remainder. Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin quote: "Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland."
Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland. Philip Larkin
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. Philip Larkin
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not. Philip Larkin
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 Philip Larkin
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. Philip Larkin
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. Philip Larkin
Earth never grieves, I thought, walking across the park, watching seagulls cruising greedily above the ground looking for heaven knows what. Don't you think it's a good line? A very good line Philip Larkin
You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing in the evenings, certainly not spread rotten books around & dredge for a 'line'. It must be like still being a student, with an essay to do after a week's drinking, only you haven't had the drinking. Quite clearly, to me, you aren't a voluntary worker, from the will: you do it by intuitive flashes, more like an act of creation, & when the flashes don't come, as of course they don't, especially... Philip Larkin
I seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles that will eventually claim me: in other words, old age, incapacity, loneliness, death of others & myself... Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf. Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again. And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new. Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh. In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. Philip Larkin

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