Quote

Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.

John Ashbery

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Blank
Finish
Pleasure
Reading
Space
Ends
Also
Come

More quotes by John Ashbery

Image
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
John Ashbery
Image
Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.
John Ashbery
Image
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.
John Ashbery
Image
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
John Ashbery
Image
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
John Ashbery
Image
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
John Ashbery
Image
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
John Ashbery
Image
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