Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
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 saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
God doesn’t do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, “Can I be excused the Crucifixion?” No!
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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 remembering someone else.
I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.
Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.
Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.
The thing I think about is that once you’ve done it, you then start to think about what you’re going to do next. It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.