John Ashbery
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 wailCollection: Mean
I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really--I just want to.Collection: Writing
I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.Collection: Writing
In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.Collection: Beautiful
A yak is a prehistoric cabbage; of that, we can be sure.Collection: Cabbage
Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.Collection: Trust
The facts of history have been too well rehearsed.Collection: History
The promise of learning is a delusion.... Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned, that the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint none of us ever graduates from college, for time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.Collection: Growing Up
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.Collection: Events
Once you've lived in France, you don't want to live anywhere else, including France.Collection: Want
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.Collection: Trying
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.Collection: Mind
I don't want to read what is going to slide down easily; there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.Collection: Resilience
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea—Collection: Ideas
Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.Collection: Inspirational
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Hurt
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?Collection: Hopes And Fears
I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.Collection: Immortal
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Home
We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.Collection: Past
... the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.Collection: Moon
Each servant stamps the reader with a look.Collection: Reading
How funny your name would be if you could follow it back to where the first person thought of saying it, naming himself that, or maybe some other persons thought of it and named that person. It would be like following a river to its source, which would be impossible. Rivers have no source.Collection: Names
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.Collection: Perfect
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.Collection: Men
Silly girls your heads full of boysCollection: Girl