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Quotes by Philip Larkin

'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.'

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

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

'I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.'

'A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him.'

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