Quote

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

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
Succeed
Persistence
Rest
Required
Everybody
Lunch
Life
Extreme
Extremes
Boxes
Patience
Succeeds
Surprise
Handed

More quotes by John Ashbery

Image
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
John Ashbery
Image
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
Silly girls your heads full of boys
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
John Ashbery
Image
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
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
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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
Image
You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
John Ashbery
Image
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
John Ashbery
Image
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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
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
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
John Ashbery
Image
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
John Ashbery
Image
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery