Philip Larkin Quotes

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.

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 superstition, like belief, must die...

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

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.

But, o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! That records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes,
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love, Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.

Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

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.

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.

I think … someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. And what's more, both sides would sooner have it that way than not at all. I wouldn't. And I suspect that means not that I can enjoy sex in my own quiet way but that I can't enjoy it at all. It's like rugby football: either you like kicking & being kicked, or your soul cringes away from the whole affair. There's no way of quietly enjoying rugby football.

What was the rock my gliding childhood struck, / And what bright unreal path has led me here?

You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.