Elizabeth Bishop Quotes

• “The art of losing isn't hard to master;
  so many things seemed filled with the intent
  to be lost that their loss is no disaster”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “The art of losing isn't hard to master;
  so many things seem filled with the intent
  to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
  
  Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
  of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
  The art of losing isn't hard to master.
  
  Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
  places, and names, and where it was you meant
  to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
  
  I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
  next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
  The art of losing isn't hard to master.
  
  I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
  some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
  I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
  
  ---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
  I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
  the art of losing's not too hard to master
  though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Close, close all night
  the lovers keep.
  They turn together
  in their sleep,
  
  Close as two pages
  in a book
  that read each other
  in the dark.
  
  Each knows all
  the other knows,
  learned by heart
  from head to toes.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “I am in need of music that would flow
  Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
  Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
  With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
  Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
  Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
  A song to fall like water on my head,
  And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
  
  There is a magic made by melody:
  A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
  Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
  To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
  And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
  Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Oh, must we dream our dreams
  and have them, too?”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “I was made at right angles to the world
  and I see it so. I can only see it so.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Insomnia"
  
  
  perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Think of the long trip home.
  Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
  Where should we be today?
  Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
  in this strangest of theatres?
  What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
  in our bodies, we are determined to rush
  to see the sun the other way around?
  The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
  To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
  inexplicable and impenetrable,
  at any view,
  instantly seen and always, always delightful?
  Oh, must we dream our dreams
  and have them, too?
  And have we room
  for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
  The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
  and the child draws another inscrutable house.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “The moon in the bureau mirror
  looks out a million miles
  (and perhaps with pride, at herself,
  but she never, never smiles)
  far and away beyond sleep, or
  perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
  
  By the Universe deserted,
  she'd tell it to go to hell,
  and she'd find a body of water,
  or a mirror, on which to dwell.
  So wrap up care in a cobweb
  and drop it down the well
  
  into that world inverted
  where left is always right,
  where the shadows are really the body,
  where we stay awake all night,
  where the heavens are shallow as the sea
  is now deep, and you love me.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
  slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
  icily free above the stones,
  above the stones and then the world.
  If you should dip your hand in,
  your wrist would ache immediately,
  your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
  as if the water were a transmutation of fire
  that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
  If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
  then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
  It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
  dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
  drawn form the cold hard mouth
  of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
  forever, flowing and drawn, and since
  our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “But he sleeps on the top of his mast
  with his eyes closed tight.
  The gull inquired into his dream,
  which was, "I must not fall.
  The spangled sea below wants me to fall.
  It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations!”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “The art of losing isn't hard to master.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “One shouldn't get too involved with people who can't possibly understand one”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “All the untidy activity continues,
  awful but cheerful.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
  and love, but they were pleasant rather
  than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
  like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
  for a baby goat. I'd have
  nightmares of other islands
  stretching away from mine, infinities
  of islands, islands spawning islands,
  like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs
  of islands, knowing that I had to live
  on each and every one, eventually,
  for ages, registering their flora,
  their fauna, their geography.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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• “I knew that nothing stranger
  had ever happened, that nothing
  stranger could ever happen.”

  Elizabeth Bishop

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