Frank O'Hara Quotes

Quotes about:

• It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.

  Frank O'Hara

  Intangible Quality, Events, Details

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.500, Univ of California Press

  31 Copy quote

• oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

  Frank O'Hara

  Coffee, Love You, Bed

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.371, Univ of California Press

  38 Copy quote

• I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

  Frank O'Hara

  Inspiring, Men, Want

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

  33 Copy quote

• Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Interesting, Personality

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.202, Univ of California Press

  32 Copy quote

• I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life's fabric, to the world's beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Ideas, Wish

  27 Copy quote

• Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible

  Frank O'Hara

  Grace, Born

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.256, Univ of California Press

  23 Copy quote

• O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

  Frank O'Hara

  Piano, Enormous

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.216, Univ of California Press

  49 Copy quote

• I embraced a cloud but when I soared it rained.

  Frank O'Hara

  Clouds

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.201, Univ of California Press

  10 Copy quote

• And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space.

  Frank O'Hara

  Stars, Sky, Space

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.307, Univ of California Press

  23 Copy quote

• the only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
  mouth
  and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are

  Frank O'Hara

  Truth, Fighting, Black And White

  Frank O'Hara (1969). “Odes”

  29 Copy quote

• It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Plot, Finals

  Frank O'Hara (2005). “In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems”, p.65, The Museum of Modern Art

  6 Copy quote

• The stars fell one by one into his eyes and burnt.

  Frank O'Hara

  Stars, Eye, His Eyes

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.167, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Chocolate, Aspirin

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.15, Univ of California Press

  19 Copy quote

• I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.

  Frank O'Hara

  Thinking, Poetry, Poet

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.261, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there. There's nothing so spiritual about being happy but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.

  Frank O'Hara

  Spiritual, Missing, Want

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.244, Univ of California Press

  8 Copy quote

• The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.

  Frank O'Hara

  Two, Literature, May

  14 Copy quote

• I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is.

  Frank O'Hara

  Regret, Clouds, People

  12 Copy quote

• I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'

  Frank O'Hara

  Running, Stars, Knives

  13 Copy quote

• I don't think I want to win anything I think I want to die unadorned.

  Frank O'Hara

  Winning, Thinking, Want

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.438, Univ of California Press

  29 Copy quote

• You just go on your nerve.

  Frank O'Hara

  Nerves, Goes On

  "He does this, he does that" by Charles Bainbridge, www.theguardian.com. July 11, 2003.

  11 Copy quote

• I am always tying up
  and then deciding to depart.

  Frank O'Hara

  Frank O'Hara (1967). “Meditations in an Emergency”, p.1, Grove Press

  8 Copy quote

• life perpetuated in parti-colored loves and beautiful lies all in different languages.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Lying, Different

  Frank O'Hara (2005). “In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems”, p.81, The Museum of Modern Art

  10 Copy quote

• I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

  Frank O'Hara

  Age, Different, Firsts

  Frank O'Hara (1977). “Early writing”, Bookpeople

  7 Copy quote

• A man was the cause of it all. An unarmed man with a weapon.

  Frank O'Hara

  Men, Weapons, Causes

  "The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara".

  13 Copy quote

• Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

  Frank O'Hara

  Lying, Tree, Heaven

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

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