A. R. Ammons Quotes

I can assure you, that once you get rid of the notion of art, you acquire a great many wonderful new freedoms.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

If life were organized, there would be no need for art.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.

Only when I'm dancing can I feel this free.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free.

The world that you can go walk outside and walk around the block. That's reality. The reality that's being talked about is something else entirely.

To make people free is the aim of art, therefore art for me is the science of freedom.

When Reality is a prison, Your mind can set you free.

The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

Art gives us the illusion of liberation from the sordid business of being.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one

In jazz, as in poetry, there is always that play between what’s regular and what’s wild. That has always appealed to me.

Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

Art is never decoration, embellishment; instead, it is work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty.

The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art.