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 BishopRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A good poem or painting profoundly alters one's perception of the world.
This quote by Elizabeth Bishop reflects the idea that impactful art, whether poetry or painting, has the ability to change our perspective and influence how we see the world around us. If a piece of art resonates deeply, it creates a lingering effect that can shape our thoughts and feelings for an extended period, enriching our experience of life.
Themes
ArtPoetryPerceptionExperienceInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of art after a gallery visit.
More from Elizabeth Bishop
All quotes →I am overcome by my own amazing sloth...Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all?
Elizabeth BishopRead
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist.
Elizabeth BishopRead
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.
Elizabeth BishopRead
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
Elizabeth BishopRead
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.
Elizabeth BishopRead
Similar quotes
We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.
Hans ArpRead
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
Oscar WildeRead
Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
Martin LutherRead
The truth is, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist is the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two have in common is the blank page. The jobs entail different talents and different desires.
Lynsey AddarioRead
Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that is creative, passionate and personal. Art is the unique work of a human being created to touch another. Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.
Seth GodinRead
The work of black creatives seems to always get undermined in one way or another, and that's what this new generation is actively changing by speaking up. We aren't accepting group categorization and group classifications to describe our work anymore - it just leads to group dismissal.
Kerby Jean-RaymondRead