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

Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations!

- Elizabeth Bishop

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentr…

- Elizabeth Bishop

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 i…

- Elizabeth Bishop

Something needn't be large to be good.

- Elizabeth Bishop

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

- 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 s…

- Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

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 …

- Elizabeth Bishop