Frank O'dea Quotes & Sayings

This world o' God's is brighter Than we ever dream or know; Its burdens growin' lighter- An' it's Love that makes 'em so! An' I'm thankful that I'm livin' Where Love's blessedness I see, 'Neath a Heaven that's forgivin' Where the bells ring 'Home' to me! — Frank Lebby Stanton

I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-wisp. — L. Frank Baum

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. — Frank O'Hara

When I am feeling
depressed and anxious
sullen
all you have to do is
take off your clothes
and all is wiped away
revealing life's
tenderness. — Frank O'Hara

I don't think anything of Laura Frank. You heard me - Laura Frank. Not Lawrence. Laura ... It's not that I blame him, I just wish he'd go to a manly tactic and just fight me. Don't whine. When he whines, that's when I change his name of Lawrence Frank. — Shaquille O'Neal

I cant write about something I dont admire. It goes back to the old concept of the celebration: you celebrate the hero, an idea. — Frank O'Connor

I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained. — Frank O'Hara

Life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
and beautiful lies all in different languages. — Frank O'Hara

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. — Frank O'Hara

I'm trying to do what Frank O'Hara did and remind myself there there's a lot of good stuff. I write about New York for my own mental health. — Frankie Cosmos

Autobiographia Literaria"
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine! — Frank O'Hara

I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious — Frank O'Hara

It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time. — Frank O'Hara

But, Mummy, couldn't God make another wars, but bad people."
"Oh!" I said.
I was disappointed about that. I began to think that God wasn't quite what he was cracked up to be. — Frank O'Connor

... and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything
continues to be possible — Frank O'Hara

So Father Ring went off in the lofty mood of a man who has defended a principle at a great sacrifice to himself, but that very night he began to brood and he continued to brood till that sickly looking voluptuary of a ten-shilling note took on all the radiance and charm of a virgin of seventeen. — Frank O'Connor

I take this for myself, and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth, tin thread and tarnished with abuse, you shall still hear as long as the beast in me maintains its taciturn power to close my lids in tears, and my loins move yet in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds you have left me alone in, and would be the dolorous distraction from, while you summon your army of anguishes which is a million hooting blood vessels on the eyes and in the ears at that instant before death. — Frank O'Hara

But it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it ... — Frank O'Hara

I call
to the spirits of other lands to make fecund my existence — Frank O'Hara

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. — Frank O'Hara

See how free we are! as a nation of persons. — Frank O'Hara

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. — Frank O'Hara

I don't think I want to win anything I think I want to die unadorned. — Frank O'Hara

Oh say can you see Alma. The darling
of Them. All her friends were artists.
They alone have memories. They alone
love flowers. They alone give parties
and die. Poor Alma. They alone.
She died,
and it was as if all the jewels in the world
had heaved a sigh. The seismograph
at Fordham university registered, for once,
a spiritual note. How like a sliver
in her own short fat muscular foot.
She loved the Western World, though
there are some who say she isn't really dead. — Frank O'Hara

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won't hate you — Frank O'Hara

I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.' — Frank O'Hara

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days! — Frank O'Hara

Tom looked more and more like a rabbi. As is the way of men of character in provincial towns, he tended to become a collection of mannerisms, a caricature of himself. — Frank O'Connor

Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!
As if there were no
such thing as integrity! — Frank O'Hara

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness — Frank O'Hara

And what's a-trouble to you, Jackie?"
"Father," I said, feeling I might as well get it over while I had him in
good humour, "I had it all arranged to kill my grandmother."
He seemed a bit shaken by that, all right, because he said nothing
for quite a while.
"My goodness," he said at last, "that'd be a shocking thing to do.
What put that into your head?"
Father," I said, feeling very sorry for myself, " she's an awful woman. — Frank O'Connor

Don't listen to this asshole, Frank," laughed Kyle. "The kid is sitting there wearing a Dying Fetus t-shirt and talking sexual morality." "Well — Jeff O'Brien

It may be the coldest day of The year, what does he think of That? I mean, what do I? And if I do, Perhaps I am myself again. — Frank O'Hara

Oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much — Frank O'Hara

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals. — Frank O'Hara

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side. — Frank O'Hara

All the Frank O'Hara types seem to have very little sound stuff going ... it's so chatty or something. — Tom Verlaine

It is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles — Frank O'Hara

The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it. — Frank O'Hara

I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is ... — Frank O'Hara

Oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy — Frank O'Hara

I have been a stranger in a strange land, Halleck quoted. Paul stared at him, recognizing the quotation from the O.C. Bible, wondering: Does Gurney, too, wish an end to devious plots? — Frank Herbert

The waves wash in, warm and salty,
leaving your eyebrows white and
the edge of your cheekbone. Your ear
aches. You are lonely. On the
underside of a satin leaf, hot
with shade, a scorpion sleeps. And
one Sunday I will be shot brushing
my teeth. I am a native of this island. — Frank O'Hara

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under
them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves. — Frank O'Hara

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. — Frank O'Hara

When
I think of all the things I've been thinking of
I feel insane — Frank O'Hara

Always in the short story there is this sense of outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society ... As a result there is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel
an intense awareness of human loneliness. — Frank O'Connor

If I am ever to find these trees meaningful
I must have you by the hand. As it is, they
stretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky,
and the snow looks up like a face dirtied
with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens?
There could only be a stranger wandering
in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself
frozen fast in wintry eyes. — Frank O'Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! — Frank O'Hara

I quote Frank O'Connor to my students: that when you are writing a story, at some point the story must take over. You are not going to be able to control it. I think this is true. O'Connor said he thought Joyce controls his stories too tightly - "Whoever heard of a Joyce story taking over?" he asked - and that there is a deadness about them. You have got to keep the story opened up, let the story take over at some point. — Peter Taylor

Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. — Frank O'Hara

A grin that wasn't natural, and that combined in a strange way affection and arrogance, the arrogance of the idealist who doesn't realize how easily he can be fooled. — Frank O'Connor

Destroy yourself, if you don't know! — Frank O'Hara

My Heart
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind.
I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open. — Frank O'Hara

must hand in their bicycles, Jews are banned from trams and are forbidden to drive. Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o'clock and then only in shops which bear the placard "Jewish shop". Jews must be indoors by eight o'clock and cannot even sit in their own gardens after that hour. Jews are forbidden to visit theatres, cinemas, and other places of entertainment. Jews may not take part in public sports. Swimming baths, tennis courts, hockey fields, and other sports grounds are all prohibited to them. Jews may not visit Christians. Jews must go to Jewish schools, and many more restrictions of a similar kind. — Anne Frank

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. — Frank O'Hara

I loved her fright, which was against me
into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock
which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted
with life!
and she'd toss her head with the pain
and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion
and she, moon-like, hated to love me. — Frank O'Hara

One never need leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes - I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. — Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not. — Frank O'Hara

Some of her last words to me, Mason, were 'I believe in fate and I believe you were supposed to walk into my life, so
Mason could walk into yours. I know she can't be wrong. — Ella Frank

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes - I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh. — Frank O'Hara

The moon passes into clouds
so hurt by the street lights
of your glance oh my heart — Frank O'Hara

It's two o'clock in the morning, they're not going to get any nooky anyway, so this one guy and the guy with the t-shirt guy started sniffing the girls panties. — Frank Zappa

Nerd Girl Problem # 235
That unexplainable crush you have on fictional characters. — Ella Frank

I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. — Frank O'Hara

When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context. — David O. Russell

I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did. — Frank O'Hara

Oh Lana Turner we love you get up — Frank O'Hara

The only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
mouth
and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are — Frank O'Hara

The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions — Frank O'Hara

There are three necessary elements in a story - exposition, development, and drama. Exposition we may illustrate as "John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X"; development as "One day Mrs Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man"; and drama as "You will do nothing of the kind," he said. — Frank O'Connor

I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist. — Frank O'Hara

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac — Frank O'Hara

all I want is a room up there
and you in it — Frank O'Hara

For Grace, After a Party"

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,

and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
you like the eggs a little

different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding. — Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there? — Frank O'Hara

There is a geography which holds its hands just so far from the breast and pushes you away, crying so. — Frank O'Hara

There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers. — Dorothy Dunnett

And the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time — Frank O'Hara

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more
adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change? — Frank O'Hara

A man and woman in search of something are always blown apart, but it's the same wind that blows them. — Frank O'Connor

And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space. — Frank O'Hara

When you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go — Frank O'Hara

Her mother was a streetwalking flaghopper and her father escaped from a lunatic asylum with bunions on his balls and warts on his wank. There is laughing along the bench and Miss Barry calls to us, I warned ye against the laughing. Mackey, what is it you're prattling about over there? I said we'd all be better off out in the fresh air on this fine day delivering telegrams, Miss Barry. I'm sure you did, Mackey. Your mouth is a lavatory. Did you hear me? I did, Miss Barry. You have been heard on the stairs, Mackey. Yes, Miss Barry. Shut up, Mackey. I will, Miss Barry. Not another word, Mackey. No, Miss Barry. I said shut up, Mackey. All right, Miss Barry. That's the end of it, Mackey. Don't try me. I won't, Miss Barry. Mother o' God give me patience. Yes, Miss Barry. Take the last word, Mackey. Take it, take it, take it. I will, Miss Barry. — Frank McCourt

I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up — Frank O'Hara

In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone o hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced. — Frank McCourt

And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural. — Frank O'Hara

There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. — Frank O'Hara

Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see. — Frank O'Hara

V. R. Lang

You are so serious, as if
a glacier spoke in your ear
or you had to walk through
the great gate of Kiev
to get to the living room.

I worry about this because I
love you. As if it weren't grotesque
enough that we live in hydrogen
and breathe like atomizers, you
have to think I'm a great architect!

and you float regally by on your
incessant escalator, calm, a jungle queen.
Thinking it a steam shovel. Looking
a little uneasy. But you are yourself
again, yanking silver beads off your neck.

Remember, the Russian Easter Overture
is full of bunnies. Be always high,
full of regard and honor and lanolin. Oh
ride horseback in pink linen, be happy!
and ride with your beads on, because it rains. — Frank O'Hara

... my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move. — Frank O'Hara

No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman. — Frank O'Connor

And I have mastered the speed and strength which is the
armor of the world. — Frank O'Hara

I was always a great believer in buttered toast. — Frank O'Connor

Then Frank said, 'Have you ever heard that when five o'clock comes, it's martini time? We could be right in the middle of a scene, but it's over for me, because it's martini time. Did you ever hear that? — James Kaplan

You know we've all sinned a lot against science
so we really ought to be as available as an apple
on a bough
pleasant thought fresh air free love cross-pollenization
oh oh god how I'd love to dream let alone sleep — Frank O'Hara

All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is. — Frank O'Connor

When in the wondrous realms above Our Saviour had been called upon, To save our world of sin by love, He said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done.' The Kings of kings left worlds of light, Became the meek and lowly one; In brightest day or darkest night He said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." No crown of thorns, no cruel cross Could make our great Redeemer shun. He counted his own will but loss, And said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." We take the bread and cup this day, In memory of the Sinless One, And pray for strength, That we may say, As he, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." — Frank I. Kooyman

Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible — Frank O'Hara

They were too young then to know what they would ultimately need from a barren and heart-sore life ... — Frank O'Hara