Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!.

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore..

Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never..

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall..

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and….

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone..

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished….

Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands..

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them..

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on..

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out..

f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!.

I dont know whether you've ever looked into a miner's eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you've ever seen. I thin….

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thou….

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name..

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remem….

I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control..

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull..

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one ….

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment..

At eighty things do not occur; they recur..