John Ashbery Quotes

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.

The beautiful is always bizarre.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

A beautiful dress can be as exciting as a poem.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I like to aestheticize every possible thing that can be aestheticized.

Nature is the most beautiful thing we have. It's better than art because it's from the creator.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

Art is significant deformity.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

With soccer, I have the ability to do things differently. That is why I admire Leonardo da Vinci. He was able to create things other people wouldn't believe in.

When I see a beautiful piece of art, it inspires me to be creative.

I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.

I just don't know what makes a picture, really - the thing that makes it is something unique, as far as I can understand. Just like one guy can write a sentence and it's beautiful and another one can write it and it's dead. What the difference is, I don't know.

There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.

Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard!

The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.

The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.

Science is the Differential Calculus of the mind. Art the Integral Calculus; they may be beautiful when apart, but are greatest only when combined.