John Ashbery Quotes

61 Sourced Quotes

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

John Ashbery
Some certified nut
Will try to tell you it's poetry,
(It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense)
But watch out or he'll start with some
New notion or other....

John Ashbery
The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake.

John Ashbery
You and I
Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are:
That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain.

John Ashbery
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises.

John Ashbery
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.

John Ashbery
The soul is not a soul,
Has no secret, is small, and it fits
Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.

John Ashbery
I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way.

John Ashbery
Expecting rain, the profile of a day
Wears its soul like a hat....

John Ashbery
Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.

John Ashbery
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.

John Ashbery
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes
That all things have their center in their dying....

John Ashbery
We are prisoners of the world's demented sink.
The soft enchantments of our years of innocence
Are harvested by accredited experience
Our fondest memories soon turn to poison
And only oblivion remains in season.

John Ashbery
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.

John Ashbery
And the way
Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes
Not heard of for years at a time, did,
Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise
It was inside the house,
And always getting narrower.

John Ashbery
Extreme patience and persistence are required,
Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed
The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.

John Ashbery
As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

John Ashbery
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.

John Ashbery
The first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.

John Ashbery
It is because everything is relative
That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and
Entertainment much more than groping shadows of an incomplete
Former existence so close it burns like the mouth that
Closes down over all your effort like the moment
Of death

John Ashbery
And we may be led, then, upward through more
Powerful forms of poetry, past columns
With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.
Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms
Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.

John Ashbery
How funny your name would be if you could follow it back to where the first person thought of saying it, naming himself that, or maybe some other persons thought of it and named that person. It would be like following a river to its source, which would be impossible. Rivers have no source.

John Ashbery
Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.

John Ashbery
If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one's actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.

John Ashbery
Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.

John Ashbery
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.

John Ashbery
Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.

John Ashbery
Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

John Ashbery
I want a bedroom near the sky, an astrologer's cave
Where I can fashion eclogues that are chaste and grave.

John Ashbery
It never seems to occur to anyone that each reader is different, and that even those who might be said to resemble each other will each bring an individual set of experiences and references to their reading, and interpret and misinterpret it according to these.

John Ashbery