Quotes from Elizabeth Bishop

Marianne Moore] once remarked, after a visit to her brother and his family, that the state of being married and having children had one enormous advantage: "One never has to worry about whether one is doing the right thing or not. There isn't time. One is always having to go to the market or drive the children somewhere. There isn't time to wonder 'Is this right or isn't it?

If they should say you have no sense, don't you mind them; it won't make much difference. Lullaby.

Everything only connected by "and" and "and.

Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: esso—so—so—so to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

Since we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what may depend on it?

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! O falling fire and piercing cry and panic, and a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky!

Screen porch in a tree.

Well, the cat is flourishing and gets more spoiled and more beautiful every day. His whiskers measure, from tip to tip, including his mouth and nose, of course, ten inches, pure white whale bone.

Bishop on "At the Fishhouses" At the last minute, after I'd had a chance to do a little research in Cape Breton, I found I'd said codfish scales once when it should have been herring scales. I hope they corrected it all right. 2 Quite a few lines of "At the Fishhouses" came to me in a dream, and the scene— which was real enough, I'd recently been there—but the old man and the conversation, etc., were all in a later dream

How—I didn't know any word for it—how "unlikely". . . How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't?

You can't derange, or rearrange, your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.) The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.

I believe in the oblique, the indirect approach and I keep my feelings to myself.

A sentence in Auden's Airman's Journal has always seemed very profound to me ---I haven't the book here so I can't quote it exactly, but something about time and space and how 'geography is a thousand times more important to modern man than history'---I always like to feel where I am geographically all the time, on the map,---but maybe that is something else again.

Sleep on and on, war's over soon. Drop the silly, harmless toy, pick up the moon. Lullaby.

Even if one were tempted to literary interpretations such as: life/death, right/wrong, male/female --such notions would have resolved, dissolved, straight off in that watery, dazzling dialectic.

The tumult in the heart keeps asking questions. And then it stops and undertakes to answer in the same tone of voice. No one could tell the difference. Uninnocent, these conversations start, and then engage the senses, only half-meaning to. And then there is no choice, and then there is no sense; until a name and all its connotation are the same.

The day was meant for what ineffable creature we must have missed?

and looked and looked our infant sight away.

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite "The boy stood on the burning deck." Love's the son stood stammering elocution while the poor ship in flames went down. Love's the obstinate boy, the ship, even the swimming sailors, who would like a schoolroom platform, too, or an excuse to stay on deck. And love's the burning boy.

I often gave way to self-pity. "Do I deserve this? I suppose I must. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Was there a moment when I actually chose this? I don't remember, but there could have been." What's wrong about self-pity, anyway? With my legs dangling down familiarly over a crater's edge, I told myself "Pity should begin at home." So the more pity I felt, the more I felt at home.

the ghosts of glaciers drift among those folds and folds of fir

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?

like kings of old, or like a miracle. It was still dark. One foot of the sun steadied itself on a long ripple in the river. The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.

A window across the river caught the sun as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.