A. R. Ammons Quotes

I was born and raised in war.

We are living even now among punishments and ruins.

Death and worse happened on the plains.

The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.

I never had a true childhood.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

One day, when we were coming back from school, we saw this big cloud of smoke coming up, and all these fire-trucks in the yard. The garage was burning down. I was 14, and we'd lost everything.

I didn't have a childhood.

Wars break things; they break stories.

One of the things that I try to do when I have a tough time with anything - whatever it may be - is just look at someone else's situation. Here in Staten Island, look, I have people that have children that haven't been back in their home for 18 months after Sandy. They lost every worldly possession.

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.

I've been through cancer, divorce, loss and bereavement, but they are things most humans go through.

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

I didn't have a childhood.

Everybody had something horrible happen to them at one time or another in their life.

There's always pain around. That's one thing you can guarantee in life - there will always be a surplus of pain.

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us.

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up.

I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters.

When I was young I lost everything.

There are worse things than war.

She loves nature in spite of what it did to her.

I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.