A Quote by A. R. Ammons

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished — © A. R. Ammons
I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
My granddad wanted to become a sign painter and designer, but was stopped; my dad would have had a real talent for language, but was stopped. When I expressed a desire to become a graphic designer, I was not stopped.
At this moment, many people have stopped living. They do not become angry, nor cry out; they merely wait for time to pass. They did not accept the challenges of life, so life no longer challenges them
As much wrong as I did in life and as many people as I hurt, I can say that God never stopped talking to me. I just stopped listening.
Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the book was so transparently about me that I stopped.
Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.
When we were children, letters were like fun toys. We played with them through our building blocks. We colored them in books. We danced and sang along with TV puppets while learning C was for “cookie.” Soon, letters turned into words. Words turned into sentences. Sentences turned into thoughts. And along the way, we stopped playing with them and stopped marveling at A through Z.
I did some acting in college. But then everything stopped when I was a junior, in the fall of 2001, when I started becoming religious. Once I became a full-on Hasidic, I stopped everything. I stopped music. I stopped acting.
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.
And then, one acting class turned into two, turned into four, and then turned into, "I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. But, I don't have a background in acting. I never acted in college, or did anything like that. How can I go about doing this?" That meant going to grad school and getting some training, and I did. I literally walked down the path. It was real fortuitous for me to walk by that school, that one morning.
Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.'
Am I jealous? he thought, astonished. Jealous of the chance object to which she has attached herself? Jealous of something that does not concern me? One can be jealous of a love that has turned away, but not of that to which it has turned.
I'm very good at compartmentalising my life. I did motor-racing for a while, stopped, didn't miss it. I did power-boat racing for a while, stopped, didn't miss it. I had such a good run at the BBC. I had a hell of a CV with arguably the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world. But I've never missed it since.
When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
According to the Buddha's teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him 'What is the beginning of God?' he would answer without hesitation 'God has no beginning', and he is not astonished at his own reply.
I turned down 'American Gigolo.' There are many films - like 'Ghostbusters' - that I turned down... The first one I did was 'Foul Play' with Goldie Hawn, but I turned down 'Animal House' - I turned that down.
I loved the Beatles when they turned up, and the Stones when they turned up, and never really stopped liking them.
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