John Ashbery famous quotes

04-12-2025

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

#Beautiful #May #Impression
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
-- John Ashbery

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

#Summer #Night #Giving
The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through â€¦
-- John Ashbery

#Years #Cake #Firsts
I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.
-- John Ashbery

#Writing #Mind
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
-- John Ashbery

#Inspirational #Life #Army
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great ideaâ€”
-- John Ashbery

#Ideas #Rooms #Enough
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

#Death #Wisdom #Effort
Silly girls your heads full of boys
-- John Ashbery

#Girl #Silly #Boys
I lost my ridiculous accent without acquiring another
-- John Ashbery

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

#Fashion #Poetry #Bedroom
We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. The soft enchantments of our years of innocence Are harvested by accredited experience Our fondest memories soon turn to poison And only oblivion remains in season.
-- John Ashbery

#Life #Memories #Experience
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

#Poetry #Trying #Poet
And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.
-- John Ashbery

#Country #Art #Powerful
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.
-- John Ashbery

#Moving #Thoughtful #Thinking
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.
-- John Ashbery

#Music #Horse #Past
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

#Music #Musician #Arguing
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 #Patience #Growing Up
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
-- John Ashbery

#Art #Poetry #Doubt
And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.
-- John Ashbery

#Thinking #Pages #Starting
In the evening Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is.
-- John Ashbery

#Schedules #Evening
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
-- John Ashbery

#Death #Wise #Office
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

#Dark #Light #Fog
The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst
-- John Ashbery

#Suicide #Dream #Flower
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
-- John Ashbery

#Moments #Indecision

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