John Ashbery Quotes
It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.
Quotes to Explore
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Traditionally, open-minded secular liberal rationalists have not made a case for tolerance.
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Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected.
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I'm an actor who wants to do great parts, and I've been very fortunate, for a long time, to get meaty roles, and sometimes some of them are meatier than others.
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No sensible author wants anything but praise.
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Coming out of college with a degree in fine arts and painting isn't worth much any more.
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The primary problem in many modernizing societies is not liberty but the creation of a legitimate public order. Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order.
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It's totally mistaken to suppose that an armed escort is going to give a journalist any protection - on the contrary, journalists who turn up surrounded by armed personnel are just turning themselves into targets and in even worse danger.
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Even as our economy starts to pick up, and new jobs are created, there is a risk that young people in Britain won't get the chances they deserve because businesses will continue to look elsewhere.
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Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.
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The majority of the time, they take air out of the football. I think that, for me, is a disadvantage.
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As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.
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I'm probably proudest of being able to lift a lot of us out of the 'hood. That's the biggest thing, that I've been able to employ a lot of people and give them opportunities.
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No days off. I'm a workaholic.
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I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.
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If you compare me to an actor, I'm probably one of the best boxers in the profession. But if you compare me as a boxer, I'm probably one of the best actors.
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Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.
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I have a very rich and wonderful personal life, and at its core are my sons.
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So we're living by that sword, and we're going to cut every now and then from it's backlash.
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I came from a mother and father who always made me secure in my beliefs, and that's where the love came from.
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Well, I'm rather attracted to rather prosaic things like vacuum cleaners and hand dryers. Where people haven't apparently made them with a great love for what they're doing.
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I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.
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An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety.
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The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.
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It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.
