Ohara Quotes

Now That I Am in Madrid I Can Think "

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stetching to the humbled outskirts with only you
Standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves' soft blue look at the hills with silver
like glasses like an old ladies hair
It's well known that God and I don't get along together
It's just a view of the brass works for me, I don't care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together. ~ Frank O'Hara

Some songs depend heavily on the character, but, for the most part, a great song begs for reinterpretation every time it is sung, even when in character. ~ Kelli O'Hara

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg. ~ Frank O'Hara

... and I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears ~ Frank O'Hara

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

Oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy ~ Frank O'Hara

They were too young then to know what they would ultimately need from a barren and heart-sore life ... ~ Frank O'Hara

He had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O'Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother's velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster. ~ Margaret Mitchell

But to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible
the iridescent darknesses beyond,
silent, listening to
the air becoming no air becoming air again ~ Frank O'Hara

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed. ~ Kelli O'Hara

The feeling of homelessness suddenly turned into something else. I called it freedom to wander. ~ Meara O'Hara

When Caroline Walker fell in love with Julian English she was a little tired of him. That was in the summer of 1926, one of the most unimportant years in the history of the United States, and the year in which Caroline Walker was sure her life had reached a pinnacle of uselessness. ~ John O'Hara

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

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. ~ Frank O'Hara

I do urge you to welcome children. Even one child will make a difference in your life that you cannot fathom. I promise you, my girl. ~ Maryanne O'Hara

If I do not go to a doctor then he cannot say I am dying," explained Jeffery. "I have not been dying for two years. If I had gone to a doc and he told me I am dying, then I would've been set low for these two years. ~ Denise O'Hara

My best friend, Pradeep, who lives next door, says that 'moron' is a big-brother word for little brothers. His brother Sanj, who's also mostly evil, calls him that too. ~ Mo O'Hara

We each bring our own unique beauty to the world, and how blessed we are to have the freedom to find that beauty in each other. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

Isn't it strange, Dez, that we never see certain parts of ourselves? Our backs, our lungs, our hearts. We never know what it really is to sit across from ourselves. ~ Maryanne O'Hara

I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained. ~ Frank O'Hara

I am ashamed of my century, but I have to smile. ~ Frank O'Hara

They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women. ~ John O'Hara

You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and Rosa Parks all at once. ~ Amanda Kyle Williams

To be part of the creation, I must act humbly. I'll take that over a goddess any day! ~ Maureen O'Hara

When I'm given an opportunity with music and goodness, then I want to do that [play that role]. I want to go all the way to the edge of that and make it as big as I can. ~ Kelli O'Hara

The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions ~ Frank O'Hara

I'm trying to think of myself at a quiet time. I need to do better with a quiet mind because I'm constantly going and I think that's what feeds me. I've been that way my whole life. But I don't think I picture things so much as I talk them through. Words, words, words. Words and melody. ~ Kelli O'Hara

I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Much as I like owning a Rolls-Royce, I could do without it. What I could not do without is a typewriter, a supply of yellow second sheets and the time to put them to good use. ~ John O'Hara

What if..." is my philosophy. I won't say it's plays like a broken record, no, it plays like a I hit the continuous repeat button on a one song playlist. When I see people who are pained and stressed by the world their trapped in, I ask, "What if?" and create their story about why they're constantly rolling their eyes behind their spouses back, then paste a smile when needed. We weren't born to live a life of misery, don't ever believe it. That's just not how it is, it's never to late too find your voice. Dig deep, grasp it and roar. ~ Eleanor O'Hara

He would never be any different and now Scarlett realize the truth and accepted it without emotion - that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. Her was in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the next room. The mainspring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it has gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience before which the blustering drama of Gerald O'Hara had been played Now the curtain had been rung down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Sometimes I'm considered, I guess, a subtle actor. Maybe I'm less of a showman and more just trying to tell the story. I don't know what the perception is. I just want to tell the story so the story as a whole works as opposed to just making sure that I work. ~ Kelli O'Hara

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. ~ Frank O'Hara

Already, with the city behind them, New York didn't feel quite real. As if reality only existed where she existed. ~ Maryanne O'Hara

Without knowing it, we became soul sisters ~ Meara O'Hara

We can't conquer the things that are bigger than ourselves; we can't even escape them. It is the wind that decides our destination, far more than ourselves. All that we are able to do is pack our bags, hop on board, raise the anchor and set the sails. We can only trust the wind and go on and on. ~ Meara O'Hara

Destroy yourself, if you don't know! ~ Frank O'Hara

Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes. ~ John O'Hara

When
I think of all the things I've been thinking of
I feel insane ~ Frank O'Hara

I dainty little lass I wasn't. I looked twice my age until I turned 10 or 11. ~ Maureen O'Hara

All the Frank O'Hara types seem to have very little sound stuff going ... it's so chatty or something. ~ Tom Verlaine

You are the sick prince of my cerise innovations and in your drowning caresses I walk the sea ~ Frank O'Hara

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

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. ~ Frank O'Hara

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right? ~ Catherine O'Hara

Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!
As if there were no
such thing as integrity! ~ Frank O'Hara

One thing I really, truly believe in is having something greater than myself to be grateful to. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Over the years, I had come to understand many things, but one was the clearest of all: you can survive anything if only you have one true friend. ~ Meara O'Hara

In Memory of My Feelings"

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

My quietness has a number of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves
from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons
and have murder in their heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times, withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I'm too blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is "fired."
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt's lust,
definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon drifting across the muddie ~ Frank O'Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! ~ Frank O'Hara

She had worn a sequined, strapless wedding gown, and left her bridesmaid to wear brightly flowered dresses to fit for a kind of pornographic milkmaid: low-cut and laced up the midriff with a sort of shoelace. What Scarlet O'Hara might have done with a shower curtain, if she were trying to snag a plumber. ~ Lorrie Moore

My stepfather, John O'Hara, was the goodest man there was. He was not a man of many words, but of carefully chosen ones. He was the one parent who didn't try to fix me. One night I sat on his lap in his chair by the woodstove, sobbing. He just held me quietly and then asked only, "What does it feel like?" It was the first time I was prompted to articulate it. I thought about it, then said, "I feel homesick." That still feels like the most accurate description - I felt homesick, but I was home. ~ Sarah Silverman

Scarlett O'Hara wasn't pretty. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Of all the jaw-droppingly beautiful women who've become genuine movie stars, none has had a longer film career (62 years), has been filmed in Technicolor more often (34 times), has had a more versatile group of leading men (from John Wayne to John Candy) or has spent more time held captive on a pirate ship than our TCM Star of the Month for July, the magnificent red-headed Maureen O'Hara. ~ Robert Osborne

I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures ... Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you ... 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. ~ Frank O'Hara

I was tops at the Scarlet O'Hara school of emotional distancing. I always thought about the uncomfortable stuff tomorrow, and, as everyone knows, tomorrow never comes. ~ Karen Chance

I loved to sing and I loved to act, and I didn't want to continue opera because I wanted to act. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Maybe all men should have to fight for something sometime in their lives. I'm thirty-three years old and I've never had to fight for a blessed thing, have I? ~ Maryanne O'Hara

I'm trying to do what Frank O'Hara did and remind myself there there's a lot of good stuff. I write about New York for my own mental health. ~ Frankie Cosmos

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

I'm tired of being Scarlett O'Hara. In my next life I'm going to come back as Melanie Wilkes, fragile and helpless. ~ Linda Fairstein

I never really try to watch the movie of the things I've been in. ~ Kelli O'Hara

The artificial is always innocent. ~ Frank O'Hara

I had always been a tomboy - I still am, at heart. ~ Maureen O'Hara

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness ~ Frank O'Hara

Comedy is quite difficult, you have to be able to have fun and portray that sense of fun to the audience watching you. ~ Maureen O'Hara

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

If you act brave, you can seem brave, and if you do it enough, you can talk yourself into believing you're brave. ~ Kelli O'Hara

I will never go anywhere with vampires again, I promised myself. I let the lure of the money and the excitement of the travel pull me in. But I won't do that again. As God is my witness . . . Then I had to laugh out loud. Scarlett O'Hara, I wasn't. "I'll never be hungry again, ~ Charlaine Harris

I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously. ~ Maureen O'Hara

The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts ... Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind. ~ Margaret Mitchell

I knew then that this hug had been the greatest teacher of my young life. ~ Meara O'Hara

People like Marilyn Monroe, Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson have done Playboy, and look at their careers! ~ Danielle O'Hara

There is nothing worse than having your personal problems become somebody else's entertainment. ~ Maureen O'Hara

I'm pretty much a good Catholic girl at heart and I believe in family. I also have a basic belief that God takes care of me. I believe in prayer, even though I'm not that religious. I just have that foundation from my family. I mean when you think that you're just a human being and one of God's creatures, you can't take anything that seriously. ~ Catherine O'Hara

I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea - in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath. ~ Frank O'Hara

Bing: You're a heel ... a low down rotten heel ... anything that doesn't go your way, anything that you can't have you destroy. ~ John O'Hara

The truth is that the writers who most influenced me weren't people categorized as crime writers. I'd say I learned more from John O'Hara, who isn't much read today but whose short stories I really admired, and Hemingway, who I think has lasted pretty good. ~ Elmore Leonard

Jackson's father said she was built like Marilyn Monroe and had the temperament of Maureen O'Hara. The man was a prophet for sure. ~ Carolyn Brown

John Wayne was one of the greatest ambassadors for the United States that ever lived. ~ Maureen O'Hara

the remnants of her Georgia drawl always sounded a bit sad. She made him think of an aging Scarlett O'Hara torn from Tara's halls but clinging to her pride and, with the help of a beauty parlor, her flaming hair. ~ Richard Laymon

Oh Lana Turner we love you get up ~ Frank O'Hara

Mrs. Porter was from Virginia and had a smooth-as-cat-fur way of speaking. She taught me how to say, "Fiddle-Dee-Dee," just like Scarlett O'Hara and she made her split-pea soup with bacon and even let me try on her lipstick sometimes as she teased up my hair in the same sixties style she wore, "Ala Pricilla Presley," whoever that was. ~ Shannon Celebi

You just go on your nerve. ~ Frank O'Hara

One of the greatest compliments my husband ever said to me was that I had the spirit and strength of a Scarlett O'Hara (from Gone with the Wind). - Strong by Kailin Gow ~ Kailin Gow

I have never been the fiddle-dee-dee, carefree Scarlett O'Hara his fantasies imagined. I'm more of the Civil War version - tired, hard, and determined. ~ Jennifer Harrison

Of the Poet's Youth"

When the man behind the counter said, "You pay
by the orifice," what could we do but purchase them all?

Ah, Sandy, vou were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert
in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days,

where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment,
a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on

the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting
change for the building's monthly pool to predict which balcony

would fall off next. That's when K. was fucking M. and M. was
fucking J., and even B. and I threw down once on the glass-speckled

lawn, adrift in the headlights of his El Camino. Those were immortal
times, Sandy! Coke wasn't addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes

and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel
we foolishly hoped our lives would become. Now it's a Friday night,

sixteen years from there. Don't the best characters know better
than to live too long? My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled
cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover's gone back
to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York.

What else to do but read Frank O'Hara to my tired three-year-old?
When I put him to bed, he mutters "more sorry" as he turns into sleep.

Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked ~ Erin Belieu

I reached our building only to find a wide-eyed Southern belle wearing a Civil Way-era dress blocking the front door. A silk parasol and a full hoopskirt completed her ensemble. I wore something like it to a costume party once, but hers was an original. Frustration was back, and now it was in my way.
In the form of freaking Scarlatt O'Hara.
Sighing, I stuck my hand through her stomach to turn the knob, meeting no resistance. I rolled my eyes as she gasped, fluttered her eyelashes, and disappeared in a puff of air.
You know, Scarlett, Rhett didn't give a dang, and frankly, I don't either. ~ Myra McEntire

I was able to do concerts all the way up until two weeks before I had the baby; I thought I was stopping a month ahead, but he was three weeks early. ~ Kelli O'Hara

your veins are using up the redness of the world. ~ Frank O'Hara

I'm grateful that I feel the way that I do - to make choices based on a lot of people's feelings - even though it has been hard at times, especially when I was younger, but I feel like it has led me down the right road for me. I'm very happy with what has come of that. ~ Kelli O'Hara

The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others - who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There's the glass you broke in anger, there's the hurt on X's face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves. ~ Joan Didion

Conservative n.
A person who possesses an underdeveloped taste for tyranny.
liberal n.
A person who believes in liberty, but only for the state. ~ Leslie Starr O'Hara

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be. ~ Kelli O'Hara

The studio thought I was crazy to perform all of my own fencing stunts, but I loved it. ~ Maureen O'Hara

I began to rationalize marrying Will[iam Houston Price]. 'He comes from a good family. A girl could do worse.' (As it turned out, I couldn't, but I didn't know that yet ~ Maureen O'Hara

What whispers from the center of the soul is an innocence - so loving, so pure, so divine - that the sage bows and the wise man weeps at the sound of its soft singing. ~ Heather K. O'Hara

I had a dresser who literally squeezed me in like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. ~ Glenn Close

Being an Irishwoman means many things to me. An Irishwoman is strong and feisty. She has guts and stands up for what she believes in. She believes she is the best at whatever she does and proceeds through life with that knowledge. She can face any hazard that life throws her way and stay with it until she wins. She is loyal to her kinsmen and accepting of others. She's not above a sock in the jaw if you have it coming. ~ Maureen O'Hara

Life is full of tough choices between less-than-perfect alternatives. ~ Maryanne O'Hara