Home > Author > John Ashbery
1 " The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through … "
― John Ashbery
2 " I'm heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities. "
3 " A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can. "
4 " 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 wholeLike some pocket history of the world, so generalAs to constitute a sob or wail "
― John Ashbery , Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
5 " Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision "
6 " until only infinity remained of beauty "
― John Ashbery , Some Trees
7 " The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensation "
8 " 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. "
9 " So one can lose a good ideaby not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asidesit knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiationsare terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and doesrecognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier. "
― John Ashbery , Flow Chart
10 " How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of youLike light behind windblown fog and sandFiltered and influenced by it, until no partRemains that is surely you. "
11 " It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star. "
12 " You bad birds,But God shall not punish you, youShall be with us in heaven, though lessConscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably,But you are the fruit and jewelsOf my arrangement . . . "
13 " The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes "
14 " I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free. "
15 " 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? "
16 " 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. "
17 " In the increasingly convincing darknessThe words become palpable, like a fruitThat is too beautiful to eat. "
18 " Once you've lived in France, you don't want to live anywhere else, including France. "
19 " Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea— "
20 " The evening light was like honey in the treesWhen you left me and walked to the end of the streetWhere the sunset abruptly ended.The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itselfTo the fragile forget-me-not flower.You climbed aboard.Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones,Dreams I had, including suicide,Puff out the hot-air balloon now.It is bursting, it is about to burst "
