Philip Larkin - Affair Quotes

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

Philip Larkin

I see life more as an affair of solitude diversified by company than an affair of company diversified by solitude.

Philip Larkin

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.

Philip Larkin