Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
John Ashbery
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Ashbery
Age: 90 †
Born: 1927
Born: July 28
Died: 2017
Died: September 3
Journalist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Rochester
New York
G'on Ashberi
John Ashberry
Jonas Barry
Jon Asshuberī
John Lawrence Ashbery
John Ashbery
Wise
Modern
Purpose
Death
Thing
Furniture
Filled
Office
Building
More quotes by John Ashbery
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
John Ashbery
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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 wail
John Ashbery
The winter does what it can for its children.
John Ashbery
The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
John Ashbery
Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.
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
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
John Ashbery
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
John Ashbery
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.
John Ashbery
Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem.
John Ashbery
I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
John Ashbery
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
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
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
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
John Ashbery
You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
John Ashbery
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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
