John Ashbery Quotes

I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time.

Motivation is just this potion to create stuff, a compulsion to express the truth of my own experiences in this life.

My motivation is not to try to inspire, but rather to do things that inspire me and hopefully that will spread to others.

There's no way of telling why you want to do things beforehand. Something just grabs you. It might not grab you six months later, and it might not have grabbed you six months before, but at that particular moment it grabs you, so you jump on it.

I feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.

I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching.

I feel a passion for what we're trying to do.I mean, why does somebody who's old who's a writer keep writing? Because that's who they are.

I stay away from the writing part because I think that if it sticks, it sticks. You just know it. The stuff that doesn't stick, goes away. The stuff that propels you forward, you can see it in your partner's eyes.

When I don't write, I feel my world shrink. I lose my fire, my color.

My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M. So as not to be dead.

I don't know why I paint what I paint. I think it comes out - it's kind of my subconscious or something.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.

It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

I have a desire to create more film, more beauty, more art, more love, but I don't feel desperate. It's not about creating or building a career.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you've looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

My advice is if you have to do music, then do it! There's no choice in your heart and your soul - unless you have that kind of great need, desire and determination, it's pretty tough out there!