J Ashbery Quotes & Sayings

Recklessness is beauty
Ashbery says. When a car
door opens in the dark
at ninety miles an hour
what rushes in is beauty.
The wind's hymns are
inaudible, the words
chased off by scarecrows
from the blurry fields.
The murmuring heart
beatless all those moments
waiting to see if you
will live. — Keith Althaus

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

The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest? — John Ashbery

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. — John Ashbery

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

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. — John Ashbery

The sun fades like the spreading
Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight
Might be read as a warning to those desperate
For easy solutions. — John Ashbery

Some day we will try
To do as many things as are possible
And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful
Of them, but this will not have anything
To do with what is promised today, our
Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear
On the horizon. — John Ashbery

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

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

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents,
through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you? — John Ashbery

As if I were only a flower after all and not the map of the country in which it grows. — John Ashbery

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. — John Ashbery

Darkness fell like a wet sponge. — John Ashbery

My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him. — John Ashbery

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. — John Ashbery

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

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

I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them. — John Ashbery

Walter Pater said that all the arts aspire to the condition of music, but I've always felt that music aspires to the condition of words. — John Ashbery

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

Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living. The night is cold and delicate and full of angels Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up, The chime goes unheard. We are together at last, though far apart. - from "The Ecclesiast" by John Ashbery — Philip Pullman

Lost in the wasteland, Ashbery was found by a light flickering up from between the fractured paving stones. Its beams were bitterly cold, and sticky in a way light had no right to be, adhering to his sleeve and hand before fading away. Intrigued, he tracked its source from one eruption to another, each point brighter than the one before. — Clive Barker

Then let yourself love all that you take delight in
Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage
That shaped you and is passed on from age to age
Down to your entity. Remain mysterious;
Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous. — John Ashbery

There are good times in everybody's satchel, nor do we all get a free pass. That would be a split decision, as they call it. How else is the planned brotherhood to float forward? — John Ashbery

It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes
That all things have their center in their dying ... — John Ashbery

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

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

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

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. — John Ashbery