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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

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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
Train
Window
Wants
Inspirational
Beautiful
Befall
Life
Speeding
Reads
Distant

More quotes by John Ashbery

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The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. The soft enchantments of our years of innocence Are harvested by accredited experience Our fondest memories soon turn to poison And only oblivion remains in season.
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... 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.
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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
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Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
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The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
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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.
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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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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.
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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
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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.
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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.
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All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
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