Elizabeth Bishop quotes

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. (Elizabeth Bishop)
The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.
Elizabeth Bishop
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
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
Elizabeth Bishop
Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.
Elizabeth Bishop
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
Elizabeth Bishop
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
Insomnia" perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
Elizabeth Bishop
The ancient owls' nest must have burned. Hastily, all alone, a glistening armadillo left the scene, rose-flecked, head down, tail down.
Elizabeth Bishop
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
Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations! (Elizabeth Bishop)
Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.
Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?
Elizabeth Bishop
Sometimes it seemsas though only intelligent people are stupid enough to fall in love & only stupid people are intelligent enough to let themselves be loved.
Elizabeth Bishop
Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?
Elizabeth Bishop
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
Elizabeth Bishop
I was made at right angles to the world and I see it so. I can only see it so.
Elizabeth Bishop
Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Elizabeth Bishop
Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts held us all together or made us all just one?
Elizabeth Bishop
The big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Elizabeth Bishop
What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around? (Elizabeth Bishop)
From a magician's midnight sleeve the radio-singers distribute all their love-songs over the dew-wet lawns.
Elizabeth Bishop
Someone loves us all.
Elizabeth Bishop
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
Elizabeth Bishop