“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one's actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.” IfsNeedsSeemsActionCertainNumbersPlotVitalityConvincing Book:Selected poems Source: Selected poems
“I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so many people and sometimes to me too.” PeopleIfsSometimesSeemsSufferingWonderDysfunction Author:John Ashbery
“It never seems to occur to anyone that each reader is different, and that even those who might be said to resemble each other will each bring an individual set of experiences and references to their reading, and interpret and misinterpret it according to these.” SaidDifferentSeemsMightReadingIndividualReader Book:Selected Prose Source: Selected Prose
“I listen to music a great deal. In a way, it's trying to express things that can't be expressed in words. That's something that interests me, too. Even though I use words to express myself, I am trying to, it seems to me, get beyond that.” WayTryingUseSeemsInterestDealsListening To Music Author:John Ashbery
“The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure of this: we in fact cannot aver with any degree of certainty that we are ignorant. Yet this is not so bad; we have at any rate kept our open-mindedness -- that, at least, we may be sure that we have -- and are not in any danger, or so it seems, of freezing into the pious attitudes of those true spiritual bigots whose faces are turned toward eternity and who therefore can see nothing.” MayDoeFactsRealitySeemsFacesSpiritualTermAttitudeKnownDangerDegreesEternityRateIgnorantCertaintyPiousOpen MindednessBigotsFreezingImplyingOverstatement Author:John Ashbery
