Philip Larkin

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

"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."

"If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first."

"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."

"You know I don’t care at all for politics, intelligently. I found that at school when we argued all we did was repeat the stuff we had, respectively, learnt from the Worker, the Herald, Peace News, the Right Book Club (that was me, incidentally: I knew these dictators, Marching Spain, I can remember them now) and as they all contradicted each other all we did was get annoyed. I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, & therefore I abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation. It’s true that the writers I grew up to admire were either non-political or Left-wing, & that I couldn’t find any Right-wing writer worthy of respect, but of course most of the ones I admired were awful fools or somewhat fakey, so I don’t know if my prejudice for the Left takes its origin there or not. But if you annoy me by speaking your mind in the other interest, it’s not because I feel sacred things are being mocked but because I can’t reply, not (as usual) knowing enough. ... By the way, of course I’m terribly conventional, by necessity! Anyone afraid to say boo to a goose is conventional."

"To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted."

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

"I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals."

"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."

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

"Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth."

"Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are, to recreate the familiar, eternalizing the poet's own perception in unique and original verbal form."

"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"

"And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of adult reconciling, And can understand nothing But the unusual laughter, And starts to be happy."

"Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break."

"Some brass and stuff Up at the holy end."

"Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence."

"Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique."

"But superstition, like belief, must die..."

"A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies."

"Nothing, like something, happens anywhere."

"Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison— Just for paying a few bills! That’s out of proportion."

"Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets—and yet No one actually starves."

"Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love."

"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."

"Don’t read too much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who’s yellow and keeps the store, Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap."

"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."

"Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age."

"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?"

"Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."

"I thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat."

"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."

"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."

"Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me)— Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP"

"Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."

"Next year we are to bring the soldiers home For lack of money, and it is all right. Places they guarded, or kept orderly, Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly."

"Next year we shall be living in a country That brought its soldiers home for lack of money. The statues will be standing in the same Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same. Our children will not know it’s a different country. All we can hope to leave them now is money."

"Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name."

"Reprinted reviews are not, as a rule, easily acceptable, but this book of jazz criticism by a distinguished poet is a different case. For a start, the writing is as crisp as you might expect and the pieces, within their small compass, are beautifully shaped."

"He believes the classic age was the 1920s and 1930s, an unfashionable view although I happen to share it. His great hero is Sidney Bechet, the soprano saxophonist, but his admiration in this area is widespread and he even allows white players other than Bix into his pantheon, another heresy."

"His general thesis, a return to the human values of early jazz, is acceptable enough, but the waspish relish with which he attacks everything outside his own tastes is hysterical and in the end alienating, even to those of us who more or less agree with him."

"The poet that I find inexhaustible in my delight of his work is still Philip Larkin."