“I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so.”
Source: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters
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Elizabeth Bishop17
American poet 1911–1979Related quotes
Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer
Strange Horizons interview (2004)
Context: I don't think all artists are mad, but there is statistical medical evidence that a lot of creative people suffer from various mood disorders. They fall somewhere on the spectrum of being bipolar, of being borderline autistic and so on. These things are there. Now of course these days you can go to college and when you come out you are a professional artist and you can run a gallery as a business and have a career. That is a very valid way for an artist to make a living. But it doesn't make for a very interesting story. It doesn't have a lot of mythic subtext. … For me a lot of the world really is like that. The scenes in my book that people describe as "such a hallucinatory sequence" … I don't see the world like that all the time, but I see the world like that a lot.
So what am I going to do about that? Am I going to go crazy? Am I going to institutionalize myself? Am I going to go and work in a cubicle as a telemarketer so that I don't give vent to that? Or am I going to take that and channel it into my work? It is a gift.
David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician
His last words, as quoted in The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (2010), by his daughter, Margaret Maria Gordon. Cambridge University Press. Chapter XXI.
John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility
Variant: Mama, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.
Source: Sense and Sensibility
Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author
From an interview in the newspaper To-Day (1894), as quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 200
Context: All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles.
