John Ashbery Quotes

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensation

until only infinity remained of beauty