Philip Larkin Writing Quotations

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any - after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

I don’t think I write well—just better than anyone else,

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

It's easy to write when you've nothing to write about (That is, when you are young)....

To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.

When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.