Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSLwas an English poet, novelist and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jilland A Girl in Winter, and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddingsand High Windows. He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 August 1922
mean language ifs
A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him.
novelists poet ifs
If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'
iceland hang-over ifs
Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.
practice ifs
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
beginning classic far formula
Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end
late nineteen rather sexual
Sexual intercourse beganin nineteen sixty-three(Which was rather late for me)between the end of the Chatterley banand the Beatles' first LP.
squat toad work
Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?
dream luck pass wake
I dream about that sometimes-and wake up screaming. With any luck they'll pass me over.
reading giving thrill
Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick; I don't care how you succeed, or What subject you pick.
drinking giving musical
The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.
sex mean moments
Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
eye age clear
They say eyes clear with age.
spiritual thinking odds
I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.
death rounds
Death: the anaesthetic from which none come round.