John Ashbery Quotes

"I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them."

"The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be."

"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."

"I was doubly thrilled. Because [Auden] had been my favorite poet ever since I first read him at the age of, I guess, 16. Because he was the first modern poet I felt I could understand and empathize with. So, coming from him, it was even more rewarding."

"There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army."

"So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night Whose ruse gave it our final meaning"

"I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places."