Quotes by John Ashbery
I don't want to read what is going to slide down easily; there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.
I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.
It is because everything is relative That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and...
Like snow having second thoughts and coming back To be wary about this, to embellish that, as though life were a party...
There are no other questions than these, Half squashed in mud, emerging out of the moment...
Such moments as we prized in life: The promise of a new day, living with lots of people...
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
Too often when you thought you'd be showered with confetti What they flung at you was a plate of hot spaghetti...
For this is action, this is not being sure, this careless Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,...
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying....
It is the blankness that follows gaiety, and Everyman must depart Out there into stranded night, for his destiny...
Worry and brown desk Stain it by infusion. There aren't enough tags at the end,...
We too are somehow impossible, formed of so many different things, Too many to make sense to anybody....
For later in the vast gloom of cities, only there you learn How the ideas were good only because they had to die,...
Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history...
The door is opening. A man you have never seen enters the room. He tells you that it is time to go, but that you may stay,...
Is there anything To be serious about beyond this otherness...
There is no going back, For standing still means death, and life is moving on,...
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Some departure from the norm Will occur as time grows more open about it.
We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. The soft enchantments of our years of innocence...
This age-old truth I to thee impart Act according to the dictates of your art...
