All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.

- John Ashbery

And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.

- John Ashbery

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

- John Ashbery

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 a…

- John Ashbery

What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?

- John Ashbery

Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.

- John Ashbery

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.

- John Ashbery

Then let yourself love all that you take delight in Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage That shaped you and is passed on from age to age Do…

- John Ashbery

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are …

- John Ashbery