{"author":"Philip Larkin","author_id":"Philip+Larkin","total_quotes":56,"quotes":[{"text":"I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["art","children","letters-to-monica","philip-larkin","poem","poet","poetry","youth"],"id":5784,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"When I was a child, I thought,Casually, that solitudeNever needed to be sought.Something everybody had,Like nakedness, it lay at hand,Not specially right or specially wrong,A plentiful and obvious thingNot at all hard to understand.Then, after twenty, it becameAt once more difficult to getAnd more desired -- though all the sameMore undesirable; for whatYou are alone has, to achieveThe rank of fact, to be expressedIn terms of others, or it's justA compensating make-believe.Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on -- in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.Viciously, then, I lock my door.The gas-fire breathes. The wind outsideUshers in evening rain. Once moreUncontradicting solitudeSupports me on its giant palm;And like a sea-anemoneOr simple snail, there cautiouslyUnfolds, emerges, what. ","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["company","solitude","virtues"],"id":7268,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"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 \u0026 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, \u0026 when the flashes don't come, as of course they don't, especially when the excess energy of undergraduate days is gone, then it is a hideous unnatural effort.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["effort","work"],"id":11757,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriagesLasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["change","expectation","innocence","sadness","war"],"id":14569,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"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.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["work"],"id":19830,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I foundA hedgehog jammed up against the blades,Killed. It had been in the long grass.I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.Now I had mauled its unobtrusive worldUnmendably. Burial was no help:Next morning I got up and it did not.The first day after a death, the new absenceIs always the same; we should be carefulOf each other, we should be kindWhile there is still time.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["kindness"],"id":31165,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["letters","letters-to-monica","philip-larkin","poems","poet","poetry","writing"],"id":50403,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence \u0026 solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, \u0026 it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["art","energy","socialising","solitude"],"id":57923,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"Morning, noon \u0026 bloody night,Seven sodding days a week,I slave at filthy WORK, that mightBe done by any book-drunk freak.This goes on until I kick the bucket.FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["humour","letters-to-monica","poetry"],"id":58006,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"},{"text":"When I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut you've always done what you want, You always get your way- A perfectly vile and foulInversion of all that's been.What the old ratbags meanIs I've never done what I don't.So the shit in the shuttered chateauWho does his five hundred wordsThen parts out the rest of the dayBetween bathing and booze and birdsIs far off as ever, but soIs that spectacled schoolteaching sod(Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)...Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the world's for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasisOf havings-to, fear, faces.Days sift down it constantly. Years.--The Life with the Hole in It.","author":"Philip Larkin","tags":["poetry"],"id":72105,"author_id":"Philip+Larkin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":56,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}