A. R. Ammons Quotes

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

I'm not invited to any exciting parties and my life hasn't really changed.

Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.

Tired faith all worn and thin, for all we could have done, and all that could have been.

The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.

In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I'm not.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell.

One is not allowed a grief for a life never lived. Yet one has buried the fruit of love, and a great deal of hope and many dreams.

I have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation's almost the same. I'm kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan.

I think I'm what they call a never-was.

It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.

There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.

I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.

When I was young, and I'd get A's, I'd get this good feeling of all the things that I could be. And then I'd never became any of them.

I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult.

You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me.

What depresses me is the inevitable way the second rate forges ahead and the deserving is left behind.

The future did not arrive.

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.