“Next year we shall be living in a country / That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.”

— Philip Larkin, "Homage to a Government", High Windows (1974)

About Philip Larkin

1922 – 1985

English poet, author of "The Whitsun Weddings" and "High Windows".

“Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and having people in them, acting.”

“Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.”

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

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.”

“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.”

“Not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.”

“Men deal with life as children with their play, / Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.”

“Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.”