John Ashbery Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Awards don't really mean much.
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I refuse to accept other people's ideas of happiness for me. As if there's a 'one size fits all' standard for happiness.
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At one level, an award is an endorsement, a confirmation, but I always find myself looking askance at awards and good reviews, as though another Garry Disher had earned them.
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Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.
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If I can help and influence girls who are going through body-image issues then I think that's amazing.
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In thinking about it, the villains often have a little bit more range because their morality is different. You can have just a really good time as an actor, and there is just more there that you can explore on that side of the story.
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My father is a silent cinema freak, so he took me to 1925 silent films that took forever, like 5-hour movies, but I've seen a lot of that stuff since I was young. And then I saw the film 'Annie,' and I just wanted to be Annie; I just wanted to be that orphan kid and wanted to sing and dance.
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I have felt that connection and stewardship for Earth for as long as I can remember. And not just for Earth, but the whole universe.
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Life is neither comedy or tragedy, life is what you make of it.
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I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.
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I'm not playing for other musicians. We're trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We'll keep him happy.
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A president who aspires to be recognized as a global leader should not personally stake out a foreign-policy goal, commit himself eloquently to its attainment, and then yield the ground when confronted by firm opposition.
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You never want to have that ticking clock and know that you had all this time and didn't use it.
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I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness - that there is something wrong.
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Mankind: A quality of life upgrade is available to each and every one of you. It should give you a quality of life upgrade, which means no drugs, no alcohol, no fast food - unless, of course, it's a mallard.
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I'm not a one-issue person.
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I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.
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Hollywood so often likes to make movies that are just about itself. I felt there were a lot of stories that were yet to be told in the middle of the country, and I wanted to capture some of that beauty.
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My first languages are German and Spanish because I was brought up by a Spanish mother and a German father, so I always spoke both languages at home. I'm very thankful that I was brought up in a bilingual house.
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I don't believe that you can judge the worth of a movie in the atmosphere in which it comes out the first time. There's just so many reasons why some pictures don't catch on.
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When I first read 'At Freddie's', I was struggling with my own writing, particularly with how to write about a sad subject - the death of a parent - without writing an entirely sad book.
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Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.
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Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
