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Frank O'Hara Quotes: 10

  • My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.

    Meditations in an Emergency
  • When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leafto turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.There's nothing so spiritual about being happybut you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.

  • 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...

  • Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac

  • I am ashamed of my century, but I have to smile.

    The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
  • That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.

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

  • I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up

  • ...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...

    Lunch Poems
  • You just go on your nerve.