John Ashbery Quotes

37 quotes in 553 categories

• I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
• And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.
• I don't find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which is by fits…
• Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
• Much that is beautiful must be discarded So that we may resemble a taller Impression of ourselves.
• There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
• The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how....
• Will occur as time grows more open about it.
• The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
• I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.
• I'm heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.
• Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
• I feel that poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.
• 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…
• The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
• What I like about music is its ability to be convincing, to carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of the…
• The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure…
• In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
• 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…
• Once you've lived in France, you don't want to live anywhere else, including France.

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