Best 80 quotes of John Ashbery on MyQuotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

But always and sometimes questioning the old modes And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor, Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now, Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over.

Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.

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

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

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.

I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

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 and starts and by indirection. I don't think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life.

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 don't want to read what is going to slide down easily; there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.

I feel that poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.

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.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

I listen to music a great deal. In a way, it's trying to express things that can't be expressed in words. That's something that interests me, too. Even though I use words to express myself, I am trying to, it seems to me, get beyond that.

I lost my ridiculous accent without acquiring another

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

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.

In the evening Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is.

In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.

I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so many people and sometimes to me too.

I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan and that these accidents are really what we mean when we talk about poetry.

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

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.

Its a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second Must be replaced by unperfect knowledge of the featureless whole Like some pocket history of the world, so general As to constitute a sob or wail

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

I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him, and I'm firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind - dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on.

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.

Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea—

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

Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.

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.

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

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.

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

Once you've lived in France, you don't want to live anywhere else, including France.

One can lose a good idea by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asides it knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.

One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into words, but it can't be put into words. That's what - the music has already supplied the meaning, and words will just be superfluous after that. But it's that kind of verbal meaning that can't be verbalized that I try to get at in poetry.

Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.

Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem.

Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.

Silly girls your heads full of boys

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

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.

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.