"Electronic Poetry Center: John Ashbery - Online Works"

“Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.”

“There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.”

“Did I say that? One says so many things, and the problem is they all get written down.”

“When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway.”

“It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.”