John Ashbery Quotes - Page 4

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.

I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really--I just want to.

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.

Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

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.

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.

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.

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

... 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.

Each servant stamps the reader with a look.

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

You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.

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

Silly girls your heads full of boys