126 Quotes by John Ashbery

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.

The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …

I'm heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities.

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 . . .

It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

It’s important to try to write when you are in the wrong mood or when the weather is wrong.

Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision

The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

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