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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When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.
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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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Becoming a vampire means completely changing your identity.
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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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It has not been easy to wake up every single day at 6:30 in the morning to then head to the gym and start a full day of work. But you have to have that kind of dedication if you want to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.
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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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I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.
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I've heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I've brought a big bat. I'm all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
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The secret of a good marriage is forgiving your partner for marrying you in the first place.
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'when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.'
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It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics... so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted.
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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.
