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
Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities that they are founded on nothing.

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
It didn't pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn't want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.

John Ashbery
All beauty, resonance, integrity,
Exist by deprivation or logic
Of strange position.

John Ashbery
The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

John Ashbery
You stupefied me. We waxed,
Carnivores, late and alight
In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.

John Ashbery
Much that is beautiful must be discarded So that we may resemble a taller Impression of ourselves.

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
The sun fades like the spreading
Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight
Might be read as a warning to those desperate
For easy solutions.

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
And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.

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
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
When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn't read poetry much anyway.

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
So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain....

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
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
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
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
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
Life is beautiful. He who reads that
As in the window of some distant, speeding train
Knows what he wants, and what will befall.

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
How many people came and stayed a certain time, Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog and sand Filtered and influenced by it, until no part Remains that is surely you.

John Ashbery