It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.

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?

And as to experience-well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have.

The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.

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.

I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Bishop on "At the Fishhouses"At the last minute, after I'd had a chance to do a little research in Cape Breton, I foundI'd said codfish scales once when it should have been herring scales. I hope theycorrected it all right.2Quite a few lines of "At the Fishhouses" came to me in a dream, and the scene- whichwas real enough, I'd recently been there-but the old man and the conversation, etc.,were all in a later dream