Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror Quotes

“The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“Its a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second
Must be replaced by unperfect knowledge of the featureless whole
Like some pocket history of the world, so general
As to constitute a sob or wail”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“Some day we will try
To do as many things as are possible
And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful
Of them, but this will not have anything
To do with what is promised today, our
Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear
On the horizon.”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“It is the lumps and trials
That tell us whether we shall be known
And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

“You bad birds,
But God shall not punish you, you
Shall be with us in heaven, though less
Conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.
Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably,
But you are the fruit and jewels
Of my arrangement . . .”
― John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror