Hens Quotes

The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn't had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen's sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite's innocent gusto. Candy. ~ John Updike

Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are 'still' struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it bre ~ Terri Windling

They had gathered at Eastcheap to wait. At this time of day, the marketplace ought to have been thronged with people looking for bargains, moving from stall to stall, examining the fresh fish, choosing the plumpest hens, buying candles and pepper and needles. The stalls were open, but the fishmongers and cordwainers and butchers were doing no business, despite the growing crowd. The sun was hot, flies were thick, and the odors pungent; no one complained, though. They talked and gossiped among themselves, strangers soon becoming friends, for the normally fractious and outspoken Londoners had forgotten their differences, at least for a day, united in a common purpose and determined to revel in their triumph, for they were pragmatic enough to understand this might be their only one. Now they joked and swapped rumors and waited with uncommon patience, and at last they heard a cry, swiftly picked up and echoed across the marketplace: She is coming! ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Marcus stepped behind the bar, saying, "Dan sent me over to assist you and learn how to tend the bar."
Doms could be pain-in-the-ass mother hens. ~ Cherise Sinclair

[W]hen the coyote falls, he gets up and brushes himself off; it's preservation of dignity. He's humiliated, and it worries him when he ends up looking like an accordion. A coyote isn't much, but it's better than being an accordion. ~ Chuck Jones

You're just pushing your food around, aren't you? You've barely taken two bites. I thought you loved Lou's Cornish hens."
"I do. I'm sorry. All I can think about is that English project due this week." I look over at Ryder with a faux scowl. "We're already way behind--you've always got some excuse. We should probably work on it tonight."
"Probably so," Ryder says with an exasperated-sounding sigh.
"That's the third project the two of you have been paired up on," Mama says, shaking her head. "I hope you two can behave well enough to get your work done properly. No more arguing like the last time."
We'd pretended to fight over a calculus project. Yes, a calculus project. Is there really any such thing?
"We're trying really hard to behave," I say, shooting Ryder a sidelong glance. "Right?"
His cheeks pinken deliciously at the innuendo. I love it when Ryder blushes. Totally adorable.
"Right," he mumbles, his gaze fixed on his lap.
Laura Grace gives us both a pointed look. "You two better learn to get along, you hear? You're going to be spending a lot of time together for the next four years."
Four years. Just the two of us--away from our meddling mamas. I have to bite my lip to force back the smile that's threatening to give us away.
"She's right," Mama says, nodding. "The only way I'm allowing Jemma to go to NYU is if she promises not to go off campus without Ryder to escort her."
Escort me? What is it, the 1950s or somethin ~ Kristi Cook

Mr. Jesmond made a peculiar noise rather like a hen who has decided to lay an egg and then thought better of it. ~ Agatha Christie

Outside, he almost missed seeing a man's shadowed form disappearing into the bunkhouse. Hick's name formed a curse on his lips.
How long had the man stood at the kitchen window? The idea that he might have seen any part of his and Willow's lovemaking made him sick to his stomach. Cursing, he headed back to the cookhouse. He hoped Providence would one day grant him the opportunity to kill that bastard!
"Who was it?" Her attire repaired, Willow unlocked the door and fell into his arms.
Unable to dirty what they had just shared, Rider forced himself to chuckle. "Just a coyote, sneaking up on the henhouse. Good thing he alerted us or we'd have been caught out here buck naked when your hens started to alert the whole ranch." He felt her relax and he let her go. "It's late, darlin', and I think we've tested fate enough for one night. We better turn in."
Willow handed him his boots and then his shirt. They took one last look around the kitchen to make sure they'd left no embarrassing calling cards. Then he walked her to the house. At the back door, she pressed a lingering kiss to his lips, then silently disappeared inside.
Rider took his time as he headed toward his lonely bed in the bunkhouse. As much as he'd enjoyed being with Willow tonight, something told him he was going to regret it. ~ Charlotte McPherren

You don't expect the goat to hatch the hen's eggs. People do what they know very well. Don't expect someone who doesn't know what you know to do it for you. Do it yourself. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

You creating ones, you higher men! Whoever has to give birth is sick;
whoever has given birth, however, is unclean.
Ask women: one gives birth, not because it gives pleasure. The pain
makes hens and poets cackle.
You creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because
you have had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth has also come into the world! Go
apart! He who has given birth shall wash his soul! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. ~ Mark Twain

The things men come to eat when they are alone are, I suppose, not much stranger than the men themselves ... A writer years ago told me of living for five months on hen mash. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

She loved all the creatures of the farm. Each one, even a hen, was like a person to her, even more real than many of the real people she knew. Some were playful or bold, and some were shy. Some were gentle, and some were wicked. Some were smart, like Fido, and some were foolish, like the hens. ~ Roger Lea MacBride

Brenna jumped to her feet the second Father Sinclair entered the chamber. "I'm so happy to see you," she cried out.
"Be happy sitting down," Jamie ordered, hovering over her patient like a mother hen. ~ Julie Garwood

He's whispering again. I'm finding it hard to hear, and we're standing close together.
What do you want to ask?
'If Hen/ was the same as she is now, in every way, but was a bit less physically attractive in one significant way, do you think you would have married her?'
I'm caught off guard by the question, but I don't want to show that I am, so I don't hesitate with my answer.
Of course, I say. I love Hen. Hen's my wife. She'll be with me forever. I've always loved he. I'll always love her.
' I know that. I know. I don't doubt you love her very much. That's not really what I'm asking, though. Are you sure you would have married her? Committed to her forever? Think about it. Does her appearance not mean anything to you? Is that what you're saying? That what she looks like is irrelevant?'
It's such a blonde question. It seems out of line with everything else we talked about. I feel a trickle in sweat slide down my spine.
I'm saying, to me, no matter what, she would still be Hen.
'Would she, though? Would she still be the Hen you fell in love with? What about this: What if she looked exactly as she does right now, but she was a little less intelligent? Would she still be Hen?'
That's just stupid. It's a stupid question. Hen is Hen. ~ Iain Reid

[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on? ~ E. O. Wilson

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Go. You are working very hard, Hassan. You deserve some fun. I will take care of Mehtab and your aunt, don't you worry. The ting about agitated hens, you throw some corn, you cluck over them a bit, and in no time they settle down. So go. I will take care of them. Not to worry. ~ Richard C. Morais

To my hens, I'm a two-legged giant who throws them corn and keeps stealing their eggs. ~ David Mitchell

Rentals sank, living rose. I could not afford help. I must be owner, agent, landlady and janitor. I loathed landladying ... I tried in every way to augment my income. Small fruit, hens, rabbits, dogs - pottery ... I never painted now - had neither time nor wanting. For about fifteen years I did not paint. ~ Emily Carr

You don't find cows with names any more and there aren't any farmers like Mr. Dakin, who somehow scratched a living from a herd of six milkers plus a few calves, pigs and hens. ~ James Herriot

The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confident man, that if we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind...
Against all this the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkelian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists, since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. But no pupil of St. Thomas needs to addle his brains in order adequately to addle his eggs; to put his head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs, or squinting at eggs, or winking the other eye in order to see a new simplification of eggs. The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God. ~ G.K. Chesterton

At evening when the lamp is lit,
The tired Human People sit
And doze, or turn with solemn looks
The speckled pages of their books.
Then I, the Dangerous Kitten, prowl
And in the Shadows softly growl,
And roam about the farthest floor
Where Kitten never trod before.
And, crouching in the jungle damp,
I watch the Human Hunter's camp,
Ready to spring with fearful roar
As soon as I shall hear them snore.
And then with stealthy tread I crawl
Into the dark and trackless hall,
Where 'neath the Hat-tree's shadows deep
Umbrellas fold their wings and sleep.
A cuckoo calls - and to their dens
The People climb like frightened hens,
And I'm alone - and no one cares
In Darkest Africa - downstairs. ~ Oliver Herford

We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch! And some men eased themselves like setting hens into the nest of death. History ~ John Steinbeck

Death is a fickle hen, and random are her eggs. ~ Armando Iannucci

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. […] He sizes women up with a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them. ~ Tennessee Williams

We mark the days by chores that need to be done, the way farm families have always done. Al feeds the hens and horses and pigs, splits wood in the fall, slaughters a pig when the weather turns cold, cuts ice in the winter. I collect eggs from the laying hens and Al drives me into town to sell them. He times the planting so that by the Fourth of July we'll have new peas and by September there's a whole field of corn. Gulls lunge for a feast, ravaging the crop, so Al kills a few and hangs them from poles as warning. During haying season in midsummer, I see him from the dining room window in his visored cap, scything the hay by hand with six hired men walking abreast, forking the newly mown hay onto the hayrack. They haul the hay to the barn, where a block-and-tackle hoist lifts it into the mow. ~ Christina Baker Kline

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude: gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea hens, sperm-whale birds, gulls of all varieties -- thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his continual challenge and alarm. ~ Herman Melville

Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.
I fot Id bettir clear it wif thi relevint oforities furst & hens avoyd any truble (like happind thi lastime) so I went 2 c mentor Scalopin.
Certinly yung Bascule, he sez, i do beleave this is a day ov relativly lite dooties 4 u u may take it off. ½ u made yoor mattins calls?
O yes, I sed, which woznt stricktly tru, in fact which woz pretti strikly untru, trufe btold, but I cude always do them while we woz travelin. ~ Iain M. Banks

Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her. ~ H.L. Mencken

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,


Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.


'Sure isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.


Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung


Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.


Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown,
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:


'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural,
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down. ~ Seamus Heaney

In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The apples stewed with prunes are excellent, except for the prunes, I won't eat prunes myself. Well, there was one time when Hobb chopped them up with chesnuts and carrots and hid them in a hen. Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it. ~ George R R Martin

I don't pray. When I was young, I vowed I never would be caught begging God. If I want something I get it for myself. I go to church only to show the old hens they don't get me down. ~ Louise Erdrich

The perturbations, anxieties, depravations, deaths, exceptions in the physical or moral order, spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinations fostered by the will, torments, destruction, confusion, tears, insatiabilities, servitudes, delving imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the chemical singularities of the mysterious vulture which lies in wait for the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious & abortive experiences, the darkness of the mailed bug, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of deep stupor, funeral orations, desires, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive insults, madness, temper, reasoned terrors, strange inquietudes which the reader would prefer not to experience , cants, nervous disorders, bleeding ordeals that drive logic at bay, exaggerations, the absence of sincerity, bores, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, childbirths worse than murders, passions, romancers at the Courts of Assize, tragedies,-odes, melodramas, extremes forever presented, reason hissed at with impunity, odor of hens steeped in water, nausea, frogs, devilfish, sharks, simoon of the deserts, that which is somnambulistic, squint-eyed, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulistic, viscous, equivocal, consumptive, spasmodic, aphrodisiac, anemic, one-eyed, hermaphroditic, bastard, albino, pederast, phenomena of the aquarium, & the bearded woman, hours surfeited with gloomy discouragement, fantasies, acrimonies, monsters, demoral ~ Comte De Lautreamont

I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs get delivered and the hens start laying again, that's all the notice I'll need to know that winter has passed. ~ Susan Orlean

A goat does not eat into a hen's stomach no matter how friendly the two may be. ~ Chinua Achebe

She brought a chicken from the coop to the chopping block. She kissed the hen's beak in gratitude, knowing the hen would nourish many youngsters through her sacrifice.

After the blessing, Oota Dabun took an ax to the hen's neck. The death was instant. Painless. Such is the mercy that comes from the slayer who knows one day he or she shall also be slain. ~ David Paul Kirkpatrick

When painting the faces of young persons ... use the yolk of the egg of a city hen, because they have lighter yolks than those of country hens. ~ Cennino Cennini

They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid. ~ Ambrose Bierce

There are days when I am envious of my hens:
when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure
as a single daily egg. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In our day there are no longer any ideas, or they are scarcer than hens' teeth. ~ Louis Aragon

the last time I saw commercial laying hens administered hormones, they were given by a unicorn, and brought onto the farm by one of the giant alligators from the sewers. ~ Marc Draco

We drove out of New Paltz heading due north. Squeezed into my tiny hatchback, among our boxes and bags, were my dog, Nico, the hens, and the humming hive of bees, its openings covered over with tape. The dog eyed the hive, the chickens eyed the dog, and if the bees weren't nervous they were the only ones. ~ Kristin Kimball

Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake (no bits or reins were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the field with a pig walking behind and calling out 'Gee up, comrade!' or 'Whoa back, comrade!' as the case might be. And every animal down to the humblest worked at turning the hay and gathering it. Even the ducks and hens toiled to and fro all day in the sun, carrying tiny wisps of hay in their beaks. In the end they finished the harvest in two days' less time than it had usually taken Jones and his men. Moreover, it was the biggest harvest that the farm had ever seen. There was no wastage whatever; the hens and ducks with their sharp eyes had gathered up the very last stalk. And not an animal on the farm had stolen so much as a mouthful. ~ George Orwell

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party's cause, you're going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That's the price you pay for whoring yourself out. ~ Glenn Reynolds

I've seen many a small life meet its doom at the end of a beak in our yard, not just beetles and worms but salamanders and wild-eyed frogs. (The "free-range vegetarian hens" testimony on an egg-carton label is perjury, unless someone's trained them with little shock collars.) ~ Barbara Kingsolver

There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

his hands moved busily among the puppets, choosing, discarding, until they pounced finally on the moon with her crystal eyes and her hands shaped like stars.
'I will be the moon,' Kyel said. 'You must make a wish to me.'
Lydea slid her fingers into the fox's head, with its sly smile and fiery velvet pelt. 'I wish,' she said, 'that you would take your nap.'
'No,' the prince said patiently, 'you must make a true wish. And I will grant it because I am the moon.'
'Then I must make a fox's wish. I wish for an open door to every hen house, and the ability to jump into trees.'
The moon sank onto the blue hillock of Kyel's knee. 'Why?'
'So that I can escape the farmer's dogs when they run after me.'
'Then you should wish,' the prince said promptly, 'that you could jump as high as the moon.'
'A good wish. But there are no hens on the moon, and how would I get back to Ombria?'
The moon rose again, lifted a golden hand. 'On a star.'
The governess smiled. The fox stroked the prince's hair while he shook away the moon and replaced it with the sorceress, who had one amethyst eye and one emerald, and who wore a black cloak that shimmered with ribbons of faint, changing colors.
'I am the sorceress who lives underground,' the prince said. 'Is there really a sorceress who lives underground?'
'So they --' Lydea checked herself, let the fox speak. 'So they say, my lord.'
'How does she live? Does she have a house?'
She paused a ~ Patricia A. McKillip

When I watch animals, I realize I am watching individual with lives that matter, to them. It isn't just another chicken or another mouse. She is that particular hen, autonomous and unique. He is that particular mouse with a unique life and social identity. ~ Jonathan Balcombe

Christ chiefly manifests Himself in times of affliction, because then the soul unites itself most closely by faith to Christ. The soul, in time of prosperity, scatters its affections, and looses itself in the creature; but there is a uniting power in sanctified afflictions, by which a believer, (as in rain a hen collects her brood) gathers his best affections unto his Father and his God. ~ Richard Sibbes

They can't complain to the police, they say, because their cows roam the streets. The police will only take down an FIR (First Information Report) and register a case if cows are stolen from within someone's property. So these farmers buy Alsatian dogs to guard the cows. They buy roosters to wake them up at dawn for the milking; and then buy hens to give the rooster something to do. Within the compound of an urban dairy farmer lies an entire ecosystem. ~ Shoba Narayan

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Like blind hens, we are ignorant of our own self and the depths within us. ~ Johannes Tauler

The sky darkened, the liquid singing of the blackbirds diminished and ceased, mud hens swam back to shore, climbed up the banks and huddled in the willows. The lights of a farm came on in the brown distance where patches of tule fog lay on the barren muddy fields. A wind came with the darkness, rattling the license plate, and a low, honking flight of geese passed. ~ Leonard Gardner

The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens' eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here. ~ Robert Sheckley

A hen's egg is, quite simply, a work of art, a masterpiece of design and construction with, it has to be said, brilliant packaging! ~ Delia Smith

My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep and choose our companion as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.
My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people. ~ Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

One large bundle held their all - bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens - all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. ~ Henry David Thoreau

If a robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage,
How feels heaven when
Dies the billionth battery hen? ~ Spike Milligan

Observing the behavior of individual fowl in a henhouse, we note that birds lower in rank are pecked by, and give way to, birds of higher rank. In an ideal case, there exists a linear order of rank with a top hen who pecks all the others. Those in the middle ranks peck those below them but respect all the hens above them. At the bottom there is a drudge who has to take it from everyone. (Adolf Remane, Vertebrates and Their Ways) ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

I'm vegetarian and stick to a strict health regime of brown rice, tofu, salads and soya milk. When I'm at home in Somerset, I buy almost everything in the local farmshops including Barleymow's in Chard. I always get organic - I like happy hens. ~ Kate O'Mara

In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells, ~ Monica Ali

When you let the wolves guard the hen house, there's bound to be a few chicken dinners. ~ James St. James

To the great delight of two ducks, four cats, five hens and half a dozen Irish children; for they were out of the city for now. ~ Louisa May Alcott

No hens or foxes were harmed in the making of this book. ~ Kate Read

He seized a bucket and plunging it into one of the half jars took up three hens and a couple of geese, ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Why, thou monkey,' said a harpooneer to one of these lads, 'we 've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here.' Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious revery is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. 10
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shrie ~ Herman Melville

From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.

The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice - no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant - let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother's sake. ~ Emmuska Orczy

The USA demanding that North Korea halt its nuclear program is akin to the fox demanding that the hens open their coup. ~ Steven Magee

Gipsies, who every ill can cure,
Except the ill of being poor
Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepar'd by arts, to them best known
To catch all feet except their own,
Who, as to fortune, can unlock it,
As easily as pick a pocket. ~ Charles Churchill

We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps the most important reason to be skeptical of government inflation numbers is that the government, like a fox campaigning to guard a hen house, has many reasons to be disingenuous. As the world's largest debtor, the Federal Government is inflation's primary beneficiary. ~ Peter Schiff

I was in a temper fit to blow the lid off a kettle of boiling water. And who wouldn't be? Since sunup, I'd been doing chores. I'd milked the cow, hauled two buckets of water from the well, fed the chickens, and then fought the hens for their eggs. Now I was down on my knees, sweat-soaked and bug-bitten, yanking weeds from the vegetable patch. My hands were caked with mud, and my nose was burned as red as a strawberry. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

You don't have roosters with your laying hens. How do they lay eggs?" Dear folks, chickens don't need roosters to lay eggs. They need roosters to hatch eggs, but not to lay them. Just like women don't need men to lay eggs; they just need a man to hatch one. A mere century ago, not one in a hundred would have been ignorant of this common agrarian knowledge. ~ Joel Salatin

The surprise of animals ... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo. ~ Elizabeth Janeway

The progress of science has been amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider the savants, those exhausted hens. They are certainly not "harmonious" natures: they can merely cackle more than before, because they lay eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller, [Pg 64] though their books are bigger. The natural result of it all is the favourite "popularising" of science (or rather its feminising and infantising), the villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to fit the figure of the "general public. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you are writing about baloney, don't try and make it Cornish hen, because that's the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darn good baloney. ~ Leo Burnett

To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks. ~ Peter Singer

Boy and Egg
Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Margherita Margheritone put the pot of water on the fire and the Wicked Witch emptied the sack into it and the little wash-bear jumped out and started biting both of them, went down into the yard and started eating the hens, and threw all the rubbish into the air. ~ Niccolo Ammaniti

Dear Mr. Duke,

As requested, here is an inventory of the animals in my care:

*Bixby, a two-legged terrier.
*Marigold, a nanny goat of unimpeachable character, who is definitely not breeding.
*Angus, a three-year-old Highland steer.
*Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia- laying hens.
*Delilah, a parrot.
*Hubert, an otter.
*Freya, a hedgehog.
*Thirteen kittens of varying colors and dispositions.


Gabe leafed through the report in disbelief. It went on for pages. She'd given not only the names, breeds, and ages of every misbegotten creature, but she'd appended a chart of temperaments, sleeping schedules, preferred bedding, and a list of dietary requirements that would beggar a moderately successful tradesman. Along with the expected hay, alfalfa, corn, and seed, the animals required several pounds of mince weekly, daily pints of fresh cream, and an ungodly number of sardines.
The steer and thee goat, she insisted, must go to the same loving home. Apparently they were tightly bonded, whatever that meant, and refused to eat of parted.
The laying hens did not actually lay with any regularity. Their previous owners had grown frustrated with this paltry production, and thus they had come into Her Ladyship's care.
And the lucky bastard who accepted a ten-year-old hedgehog? Well, he must not only provide a steady supply of mealworms, but remain ever mindful of certain "traumatic experiences in her youth. ~ Tessa Dare

The nest may be constructed, so far as the sticks go, by the male bird; but only the hen can line it with moss and down! ~ Frances Power Cobbe

Sometimes Hen ... I think I would give my life just for one of your smiles. ~ Julia Quinn

Nancy taught two hens to help her sort flowers to make leis. She set them down by a basket of three colors of plastic flowers. One hen quickly pulled out all the red flowers, and another the white ones, leaving the pink flowers in the basket. ~ Karen Pryor

Rage did her no good. You didn't get mad at the weasel who was sneaking into your yard and eating your hens. You simply laid a trap and disposed of the animal. Anger was pointless. - Egwene, pg. 77 ~ Robert Jordan

I'm mad about gardening. I have an allotment on the other side of Hampstead Heath, and I keep three hens in my garden. ~ Deborah Moggach

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen. ~ Diane Lane

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. ~ James Thurber

The crows may crow, but the hens deliver the goods. ~ Steven Tyler

I would pore for hours over the stalls of worn necklaces, sets of gilt spoons, sugar tongs in the shape of hen's feet or midget hands, clocks that didn't work, flowered china, spotty mirrors and ponderous furniture, the flotsam left by those receding centuries in which, more and more, I was living. ~ Margaret Atwood

Hen Baillie [Walsh, writer and director] wrote the movie for me I wasn't doing what I'm doing today, so when we actually came to make the movie it seemed silly to change it. But who knows? That's the way things go. What was interesting for me - and what was always interesting in the script - was that you've got someone who appears to have everything, or at least has the opportunity to have everything, and he's f**ked it up, or lost it. ~ Daniel Craig

Each course was more delectable than the last. Phoebe would have thought nothing could have surpassed the efforts of the French cook at Heron's Point, but this was some of the most delicious fare she'd ever had. Her bread plate was frequently replenished with piping-hot milk rolls and doughy slivers of stottie cake, served with thick curls of salted butter. The footmen brought out perfectly broiled game hens, the skin crisp and delicately heat-blistered... fried veal cutlets puddled in cognac sauce... slices of vegetable terrine studded with tiny boiled quail eggs. Brilliantly colorful salads were topped with dried flakes of smoked ham or paper-thin slices of pungent black truffle. Roasted joints of beef and lamb were presented and carved beside the table, the tender meat sliced thinly and served with drippings thickened into gravy. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay, a big stack of bills that gets bigger each day. ~ Ray Charles

Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes,
She's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em inna pens
Wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock
One flew east, one flew west
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
O-U-T- spells out… goose swoops down and plucks you out. ~ Ken Kesey

The feasant hens of Colchis, which have two ears as it were consisting of feathers, which they will set up and lay down as they list. ~ Pliny The Elder

The coops were finished. They were not masterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deep thought, as who should say: "Now what in the world have we struck here?" But they were coops, within the meaning of the act, and we induced the hens to become tenants. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Broody hens are sitting ducks.
Moody wrens are big dumbclucks. ~ John Biccard

What's the meaning of all the pious clamor, condemning cocks and hens? Those who have no teeth are the greatest meat-haters. ~ Franz Grillparzer