Quotes by Elizabeth Bishop

“The art of losing isnt hard to masters; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

“What childishness is it that while theres breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around?”

“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.”

“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?”

“Icebergs behoove the soul (Both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.”

...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..

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 burnas if the water were a transmutation of firethat 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 mouthof the world, derived from the rocky breastsforever, flowing and drawn, and sinceour knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

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

I never knew him. We both knew this place, apparently, this literal small backwater, looked at it long enough to memorize it, our years apart. How strange. And its still loved, or its memory is (it must have changed a lot). Our visions coincided--visions is too serious a word--our looks, two looks: art copying from life and life itself, life and the memory of it so compressed theyve turned into each other. Which is which? Life and the memory of it cramped, dim, on a piece of Bristol board, dim, but how live, how touching in detail --the little that we get for free, the little of our earthly trust. Not much. About the size of our abidance along with theirs: the munching cows, the iris, crisp and shivering, the water still standing from spring freshets, the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

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 theres 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?

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!O falling fire and piercing cryand panic, and a weak mailed fistclenched ignorant against the sky!

One has to commit a painting, said Degas,the way one commits a crime.

How—I didnt know anyword for it—how unlikely. . .How had I come to be here,like them, and overheara cry of pain that could havegot loud and worse but hadnt?

Loves the sonstood stammering elocutionwhile the poor ship in flames went down

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.

“...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..”