Quotes from Frank O'Hara

when the tears of a whole generation are assembled they will only fill a coffee cup just because they evaporate doesn't mean life has heat

It's a summer day, and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world.

you are of me, that's what and that's the meaning of fertility hard and moist and moaning

I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

instead of hanging around the yard or up in their room hating you prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys

if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go Frank O'Hara, from "Morning Poem," The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara . (University of California Press March 31, 1995)

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 is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass.

There's too much lime in the world and not enough gin. —Frank O'Hara, from "Poem," The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara . (University of California Press March 31, 1995)

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, from "Meditations in an Emergency," Meditations in an Emergency . (Grove Press; Reissue edition April 1, 1996) Originally published 1957.

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—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.

"Sun, don't go!" I was awakeat last. "No, go I must, they're callingme.""Who are they?"Rising he said, "Someday you'll know. They're calling to youtoo." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparentand he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

I wanted to be sure to reach you;though my ship was on the way it got caughtin some moorings. I am always tying upand then deciding to depart.

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."

It is 12:20 in New York a Fridaythree days after Bastille Day, yesit is 1959 and I go get a shoeshinebecause I will get off the 4:19 in Easthamptonat 7:15 and then go straight to dinnerand I don't know the people who will feed me

If anyone was lookingfor me I hid behind atree and cried out "I aman orphan."And here I am, thecenter of all beauty!writing these poems!Imagine!

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!there is no snow in Hollywoodthere is no rain in CaliforniaI have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up

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

I'm becoming the street. Who are you in love with? me? Straight against the light I cross.

Andalways embrace things, people earthsky stars, as I do, freely and withthe appropriate sense of space.

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

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

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.