126 Quotes by John Ashbery

We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won’t in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.

Once you’ve lived in France, you don’t want to live anywhere else, including France.

Just when I thought there wasn’t room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea –.

I don’t want to read what is going to slide down easily; there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.

I am often asked why I write, and I don’t know really – I just want to.

Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision.

I don’t find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which is by fits and starts and by indirection. I don’t think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life.

I don’t look on poetry as closed works. I feel they’re going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...