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Elizabeth Bishop Quotes

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.

✵ 8. February 1911 – 6. October 1979  •  Other names الیزابت بیشاپ
Elizabeth Bishop photo
Elizabeth Bishop: 17 quotes0 likes

Famous Elizabeth Bishop Quotes

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

Elizabeth Bishop

Source: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters

“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

“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

“Insomnia"


perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.”

Elizabeth Bishop

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

Source: The Complete Poems 1927-1979

“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

Source: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments

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

Elizabeth Bishop

Source: Questions of Travel

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

Elizabeth Bishop

Source: The Complete Poems 1927-1979

“From a magician's midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.”

Elizabeth Bishop

Poem: Late Air

“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

Poem: In the Waiting Room

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

Elizabeth Bishop

Poem: Sleeping standing up
Poems, North and South (1946)

“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

Poem: At the Fishhouses

“The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down”

Elizabeth Bishop

Poem: The Armadillo http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bishop.armadillo.html

“Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.”

Elizabeth Bishop

Poem: The Map
Poems, North and South (1946)

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