Quotes by John Ashbery
You have original artworks hanging on the walls oh I said edit
At first it was as though you had passed, But then no, I said, he is still here, Forehead refreshed.
Life is beautiful. He who reads that As in the window of some distant, speeding train Knows what he wants, and what will befall.
"This is what my learning Teaches," the Aquarian said, "To absorb life through the pores For the life around you is dead."
I could say it's the happiest period of my life. It hasn't got much competition!
You might as well linger On verandas, enjoying life, knowing The end is essentially unpredictable.
Silly girls your heads full of boys
Yes, in the long run there is something to be said for these shiftless days, each distilling its drop of poison until the cup is full; there i...
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything...
You who were directionless, and thought it would solve everything if you found one, What do you make of this? Just because a thing is imm...
Then it doesn't Matter that the deaths come in the wrong order. All has been so easily...
How could he explain to them his prayer That nature, not art, might unsurp the canvas?
Only then can the chronic inattention Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory....
"We, we children, why our lives are circumscribed, circumferential; Close, too close to the center...."
Well, it is a good experience, to divest oneself of some tested ideals, some old standbys, And even finding nothing to put in their place...
One idea is enough to organize a life and project it Into unusual but viable forms, but many ideas merely...
it is best then that the buried word remain buried for we were intended to appreciate only its fruits and not the secret principle activating ...
Life became a pregnant silence, but it was understood that the silence was to lead nowhere.
As words go crying after themselves, leaving the dream Upended in a puddle somewhere As though "dead" were just another adjective.
A moment that gave not only itself, but Also the means of keeping it, of not turning to dust...
... the girls who came at dawn To pay a visit to the young child, and how, when he grew up to be a man...
... that there is no other way, That the history of creation proceeds according to...
How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher Of life, my great love?
Some day I'll claim to you how all used up I am because of you but in the meantime the ride...
Everything is being blown away; A little horse trots with a letter in its mouth, which is read with eagerness...
