Quotes from Frank O'Hara

my words are love which willfully parades in its room, refusing to move.

your veins are using up the redness of the world.

I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you'd be proud of

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy we shall be happy but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible

It may be the coldest day of The year, what does he think of That? I mean, what do I? And if I do, Perhaps I am myself again.

If life were merely a habit, I should commit suicide; but even now, more or less desperate, I cannot but think, 'Something wonderful may happen.' It is not optimism, it is a rejection of self-pity (I hope) which leaves a loophole for life… I merely choose to remain living out of respect for possibility. And possibility is the great good. — Frank O'Hara, Early Writing , 108-9 (1/22/49) Bookpeople (June 1977).

to be cool, decisive, precise, yes, while the barn door hits you in the face

There's too much lime in the world and not enough gin

As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is "yearning.

Stars are out and there is sea enough beneath the glistening earth to bear me toward the future which is not so dark. I see.

There were occasionally rifts in the cloud where the face of a woman appeared, frowning.

And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural.

when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go

In retrospect, the saddest moment of one's life would seem to be that in which one first became aware that sensibility must be protected by intelligence if it is to survive living. It is that realization that puts the bloodshed into adolescence. And the lack of that realization makes the rest of life a bloodshed.

Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to it's true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won't hate you

Travel" Sometimes I know I love you better than all the others I kiss it's funny but it's true and I wouldn't roll from one to the next so fast if you hadn't knocked them all down like ninepins when you roared by my bed I keep trying to race ahead and catch you at the newest station or whistle stop but you are flighty about schedules and always soar away just as leaning from my taxicab my breath reaches for the back of your neck

Oh say can you see Alma. The darling of Them. All her friends were artists. They alone have memories. They alone love flowers. They alone give parties and die. Poor Alma. They alone. She died, and it was as if all the jewels in the world had heaved a sigh. The seismograph at Fordham university registered, for once, a spiritual note. How like a sliver in her own short fat muscular foot. She loved the Western World, though there are some who say she isn't really dead.

O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

Song " I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab which is typical and not just of modern life mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves must lovers of Eros end up with Venus muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you how I hate disease, it's like worrying that comes true and it simply must not be able to happen in a world where you are possible my love nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

You are the sick prince of my cerise innovations and in your drowning caresses I walk the sea

I wouldn't want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry — all of the past you read is usually quite great — but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side.

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world