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Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities—
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts—
held us all together
or made us all just one?

— Elizabeth Bishop Geography III (1976)

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Women

More quotes by Elizabeth Bishop

The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.

North & South (1946)

From a magician's midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.

North & South (1946)

Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?

Questions of Travel (1965)

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Questions of Travel (1965)

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down.

Questions of Travel (1965)

All Elizabeth Bishop quotes →

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There is a Lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
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And yet I love her till I die.

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To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.

Mahatma Gandhi

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Bishop (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.