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
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.
Interpretation
This quote beautifully describes the deep emotional connection and intimacy shared between lovers.
In this quote, Elizabeth Bishop illustrates the profound bond between lovers as they share an intimate and profound understanding of each other, akin to two pages of a book that read one another even in darkness. The imagery suggests that their knowledge of each other is complete and lifelong, embodying a relationship where both partners are deeply entwined in a shared existence, comfortable in their unity even subconsciously.
In practice
During a wedding speech, one might quote this to emphasize the bond between the couple.
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?
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos.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.
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.
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.
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 concentration.
I think about being married again, having a home and a wife. No one can ever be married too many times, and maybe if I keep trying I'll get it right one day.
I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it?
What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.
I made such a fool of myself,” she lamented. “Love does not make you a fool.” “He didn’t love me back.” “That does not make you a fool, either.” “Just tell me …” Her voice cracked. “When does it stop hurting?” “Sometimes never.
I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.