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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
LoveIntimacyConnectionRelationshipUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding speech, one might quote this to emphasize the bond between the couple.
More from Elizabeth Bishop
All quotes →It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos.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
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.
Elizabeth BishopRead
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