Elizabeth Bishop Quotes

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" ... having spent most of my life timorously seeking for subsistence along the coastlines of the world.

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so Im sure its a good one—and the same goes for paintings. ”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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