Heron Quotes

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear. ~ Dogen

She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.
And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool. ~ Vikram Seth

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side. ~ Iain Banks

Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, 'I'm New Here,' doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones. ~ Will Hermes

I find it not just strange but almost ridiculous that people could take a song like the one I was doing and interpret it is corroding anything. Folks have the feeling that oftentimes if you don't talk about something it will go away. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

May your love be firm, and may your dream of life together be a river between two shores - by day bathed in sunlight, and by night illuminated from within. May the heron carry news of you to the heavens, and the salmon bring the sea's blue grace. May your twin thoughts spiral upward like leafy vines, like fiddle strings in the wind, and be as noble as the Douglas fir. May you never find yourselves back to back without love pulling you around into each other's arms. ~ James Bertolino

I think that the more people who speak out, and say things and take stands on positions that will better our community, the better off each and every other individual artist or otherwise, will be. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Turn around, turn around, turn around
And you may come full circle
And be new here again ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I learnt early on that your audience take the songs in the way they want to rather than the way you might want them too. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

In a shadowy place something white flew up. It was a heron, and it went away over the dark treetops. William Wallace followed it with his eyes and Brucie clapped his hands, but Virgil gave a sigh, as if he knew that when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign.
("The Wide Net") ~ Eudora Welty

In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not. This was because of her worries as to whether to purchase a small property, the Old House, with its own warehouse on the foreshore, and to open the only bookshop in Hardborough. The uncertainty probably kept her awake. She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much. Florence felt that if she hadn't slept at all - and people often say this when they mean nothing of the kind - she must have been kept awake by thinking of the heron. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

Love is when you find something so great, so ... necessary, that it becomes more important to you than your own goals, than your own life - not because your life has no meaning without it, but because it gives your life a meaning it never had before. ~ Dan Wells

Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds. ~ Will Hermes

The Pond"

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I'll be singing. ~ Mary Oliver

Oftentimes, the way it seems to be is that our artists in particular point themselves out as spokesmen for a certain constituency in a community, and thereby place themselves in that vulnerable position. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Open the door of nature; enter inside; forget yourself; think nothing; be the nature itself and now you are a heron, a river, a rosehip, you are the shadow of a fox, sweet fruit of a tree, you are the silence of a lake! When you forget yourself, when you stop thinking, you become everything, you become the universe itself! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Our accomplishments show what kind of people we are. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Emily Williamson never thought she would find commitment so liberating, that her conviction to her cause could promote such happiness within her. She stands in the London sunshine, watching Mrs. Phillips model as a heron, and she feels nothing but gratitude and wonder at the beauty of life. ~ Helen Humphreys

The truth is that in this country you here you're more likely to be harassed, hurt, or killed if you're a minister speaking about progress for Black people than if you are a sure enough revolutionary. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Twice and twice shall he be marked
twice to live, and twice to die.
Once the heron, to set his path.
Twice the heron, to name him true.
Once the Dragon, for remembrance lost.
Twice the Dragon, for the price he must pay. ~ Robert Jordan

I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

You should be able to do anything you can afford as an adult. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

She [Justice Sandra Day O'Connor], unlike, Judge Bork, did not think that being on the court would be an "intellectual feast," to quote Judge [Robert Heron] Bork. ~ Joe Biden

America .. the international Jekyll and Hyde ... the land of a thousand disguises, sneaks up on you but rarely surprises ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show. ~ Philip Sidney

If you aren't having no fun, die, because you're running a worthless program, far as I'm concerned. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Every once in a while, you live long enough to get the respect that people didn't want to give while you were trying to become a senior citizen. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

He was close enough so that I could see his face clearly, even with his helmet's cheek flaps tied tightly under his bearded chin. I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, the colour of rich farm soil, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among these hordes of wild, screaming brutes. He wore a small round shield buckled to his left arm instead of the massive body-length type most of the other nobles carried. In it was painted a flying heron, a strangely peaceful emblem in the midst of all this mayhem and gore. ~ Ben Bova

Music has the power to make me feel good like nothing else does. It gives me some peace for a while. Takes me back to who I really am. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

[I have] a heavenly vase full of autumn leaves today. They look so beautiful. How much closer to God can one get? And a beautiful blue heron flew over the brook. Nature can make me cry faster than anything. ~ Lotte Lenya

I know you belong to everybody
But you can't deny that I'm you ~ Mike Heron

Everything that's bad for you catches on too quickly in America, because that's the easiest thing to get people to invest in, the pursuits that are easy and destructive, the ones that bring out the least positive aspects of people. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

Stand as far away from me as you can
And ask me why
Hang on to your rosary beads
Close your eyes to watch me die

You keep saying kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it
God, but did you ever try
To turn your sick soul inside out
So that the world
So that the world
Can watch you die ~ Gil Scott-Heron

With Saint Heron, I really wanted to celebrate and continue to cultivate the community for genre-defying R&B artists. ~ Solange Knowles

I am not made for despair ~ Lian Hearn

I'm sorry," I say, bringing my hand over my mouth. "I'm so sorry, Erik."

Erik shakes his head. "I'm useless to you now," he says. "I have no army for you, Theo. I can't lead a battalion. I'm not even sure I could lead the way out of this tent."

"You're blind," Heron says, finding his voice again finally.

"Half," Erik says, motioning to the swollen eye. "This one should heal, I think. But with no depth perception and a narrower field of vision - "

"No," Heron says. "I mean you're blind - you aren't dead. You want to help, you want to save your people, then do it. You don't have to lead an army to do that. ~ Laura Sebastian

When somebody's too smooth like he is, then somebody else is going to get the rough of it I always say. ~ Heron Carvic

When we were doing the "Angel Dust" thing we got information from the National Institute of Drug Abuse because we knew that if we went out and said something about angel dust people were going to ask questions about it and we wanted to be sure we had all the information to deal with it when those questions came up. So it's all a question of being as prepared as possible out front, so that if you are going to deal with information it'll be correct. A lot of people won't check it out but some people will. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

A black-crowned night heron stood on an apron of wet sand, looking across the channel. The feather plume at the back of his head lifted in a faint breeze. Out there the channel churned its cyclonic eddies counterclockwise. Schools of anchovies, halibut, and sea bass came and went: silver flashes, small storms that well up from the inside of the sea but are short-lived, like lightning. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

The heron must be used to people, and yet it never lets you get too close. Draw parallel to it with the width of one of the marsh's holding ponds between you, and it will duck its head, eyeing you with suspicion, then fly. I cannot approach the heron, certainly could never touch it; I can only look for it, entranced.
This is how I understand the divine, and why I continue to seek it in the resolutely non-human world, with which we nonetheless recognize a numinous kinship. Sometimes, it will turn and lock eyes with you, lifting you out of yourself, changing everything. Other times, it will give you the side-eye and swoop away, leaving you longing for retreating beauty. You might not see it every single time you go looking, or where you expect to find it. No matter how common the experience, every time you stumble across mystery, or independent wild being, it is a surprise and a miracle. And every day, you can look." - Sara Amis, "A Daily Heron ~ John Halstead

You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch, but actually it's moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks' efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

We shouldn't sleep together. Sleeping is bad. Sex is good, sleeping together is something else. ~ Kristen Ashley

I never know the heron as it flies at first. What is the slow, wide-winged figure in the sky? Then I see it, like a word in a foreign language, like seeing one's own name written in a strange alphabet and recognizing it, I say it: the heron. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

When you see a heron eating an innocent rabbit, what comes to your mind? Do you say 'What a great order God has created?' or you say 'What a devilish horror is going on here!' Question your beliefs! If the strong eats the weak, there is absolutely nothing divine in here, but there is only injustice and nightmare! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Colour is not the issue in America; class is. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I don't think people in power have the potential to do anything like that to me. I feel as though as long as our music is available, folks are going to hear it. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron? ~ Alfred Russel Wallace

The Heron

Every morning at dawn the heron comes winging across the woods to rob my lake of its trout. It is not a very large lake, and there are not very many trout; soon there will be none at all if the heron continues to breakfast in this fashion. I would not grudge him a reasonable meal occasionally, but he is an indiscriminate and extravagant fisherman who pulls out trout too large for him to swallow and strews them mangled on the bank. The good fisherman, the honest angler, returns his smaller catch to the water; the heron acts contrariwise, failing to return those which are too big to be of any use to him. The other day he was seen struggling with one half way down his throat; and in spite of my liking for herons, especially when they frequent other people's lakes and streams, I confess I wish it had choked him. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The trouble some people have being German, I thought, I have being human. In a way it was stupid to be more disturbed by a dead bird than by those other things, the wars and riots and the massacres in the newspapers. But for the wars and riots there was always an explanation, people wrote books about them saying why they happened: the death of the heron was causeless, undiluted. ~ Margaret Atwood

Begin. Keep on beginning. Nibble on everything.
Take a hike. Teach yourself to whistle. Lie.
The older you get the more they'll want your stories.
Make them up. Talk to stones. Short-out electric
fences. Swim with the sea turtle into the moon. Learn
how to die. Eat moonshine pie. Drink wild geranium
tea. Run naked in the rain. Everything that happens
will happen and none of us will be safe from it.
Pull up anchors. Sit close to the god of night.
Lie still in a stream and breathe water. Climb to the
top of the highest tree until you come to the branch
where the blue heron sleeps. Eat poems for breakfast.
Wear them on your forehead. Lick the mountain's
bare shoulder. Measure the color of days
around your mother's death. Put your hands over
your face and listen to what they tell you. ~ Ellen Kort

And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke. ~ Dylan Thomas

A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river. ~ John Steinbeck

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I mean it, it's another gap in your education. Until you can learn to understand her, you'll get nowhere as a detective. She's everybody's conscience, Bob - the universal maiden aunt, cousin or sister. Humanity's backbone. Throughout history, she's gone to the stake for you again and again; not with any sense of heroism, but as a matter of principle and because it would never occur to her to do anything else. ~ Heron Carvic

You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I blaze with a deep sullen magic, smell lust like a heron on fire; all words I form into castles then storm them with soldiers of air. What I seek is not there for asking. My armies are fit and well trained. This poet will trust her battalions to fashion her words into blades. At dawn I shall ask them for beauty, for proof that their training went well. At night I shall beg their forgiveness as I cut their throats by the hill. My navies advance through the language, destroyers ablaze in high seas. I soften the island for landings. With words, I enlist a dark army. My poems are my war with the world. I blaze with a deep southern magic. The bombardiers taxi at noon. There is screaming and grief in the mansions and the moon is a heron on fire. ~ Pat Conroy

I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Words are important for the mind, but the notes are for the soul. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light ~ Mary Oliver

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself. ~ Mary Oliver

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I don't suspect that in many instances the artists who are dedicated in that fashion to the progress of that community are as well protected by the community as might be necessary. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically. ~ John Steinbeck

When it comes to people's safety, money wins out every time ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I tour more than I need to, more than is good for you. But it's my favorite part of music. I much prefer it to studio work. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

God comes to each of us in the form we can best perceive Him. To you, just now, He was a heron. To someone else, He might come as a flower or even a breeze. ~ Richard Zimler

The one thing I'm really excited about is that the Saint Heron shop is not grounded in just fashion and clothing. We have connected with artists and artisans in every landscape. ~ Solange Knowles

I was a piano player before I was a poet. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I had long wondered," Lan said to Tam. "About the man who had given Rand that heron-marked blade. I wondered if he had truly earned it. Now I know." Lan raised his own sword in salute. ~ Robert Jordan

In his old life, the answer would have been easy: He'd have just put a gun to Vin's head and dragged the fucker to the altar. Now? He needed to be a little more civilized. ~ J.R. Ward

Your life has to consist of more than 'Black people should unite.' You hope they do, but not twenty-four hours a day. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Maybe the Snowy Heron is going to come off pretty badly when the planes come together. Maybe. But he's still proud and beautiful. His head is high, and he's got this sharp beak that's facing out to the world.
He's okay for now. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

I was born in Chicago, but I was raised in a town called Jackson, Tennessee. And a lot of these changes that were necessary and talked about it as important have been made, like, people go to school where they want to go. They work for equal pay, they work for - they can go school and have an equal shot at a job. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Blue Heron Biotechnology, ~ Peter H. Diamandis

The lesson here is, the way of truth is a very narrow path. Jesus was the Word made flesh. He spoke the Word of truth because He was truth. So when he began to explain to his disciples what had to come to pass in order that man's redemption could be attained, he was speaking God's truth. But when Peter reacted as he did, he was using his five senses and was going directly against the revealed Word of truth. Thus he was stepping off the narrow path and into error. ~ Patrick Heron

I have a novel that I can write. It's about three soldiers from Somalia. Some babies have been disappearing up on 144th Street, and I speculate later on what happened to them and how they might have been got back. These guys are dead, all three, and they have a chance in the afterlife to do something they should have done when they were alive. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

He will die, I am in no way doubtful of that fact and he will be scared of me, he should be, he's now planted a seed, I just need that seed to grow. It will grow into the act of revenge, and that combined with the hatred I feel for him, will bring him to his knees. ~ J.A. Heron

I thought that some of my best records was when there wasn't a lot of work being done on it, like 'Winter in America' and 'Secrets' and when there weren't a whole lot of people in the studios. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage. ~ Henry Rollins

Every show that sells out is like a hero's welcome for me. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Inman guessed Swimmer's spells were right in saying a man's spirit could be torn apart and cease and yet his body keep on living. They could take deathblows independently. He was himself a case in point, and perhaps not a rare one, for his spirit, it seemed, had been about burned out of him to fear that the mere existence of the Henry repeating rifle or the éprouvette mortar made all talk of spirit immediately antique. His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs. It seemed a poor swap to find that the only way one might keep from fearing death was to act numb and set apart as if dead already, with nothing left of you but a hut of bones. ~ Charles Frazier

If we meet somebody who has never made a mistake, lets help them start a religion. Until then, were just going to meet other humans and help to make each other better. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

I will pull on my stockings and go quietly past the bedroom doors, and down through the kitchen, out through the garden past the greenhouse into the field. It is still early morning. The mist is on the marshes. The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields - all are mine. ~ Virginia Woolf

When I discovered Gil Scott-Heron, I discovered a musical hero, a man who spoke baritone truth to power over jazzy funk at a time when funky music was primarily about shake, shake, shaking your booty. ~ Will Hermes

Thank god for Vegas. Seriously.
A lobotomy wasn't as effective as a weekend three hours of Red Bull away (from LA, not Pismo) where I wore the thinnest pinned stilettos, gambled like a sweaty degenerate mobster in black loafers, drank like Amy Winehouse and Charles Bukowski's baby, and snorted throat-dripping lines of coke in a Hard Rock Hotel bathroom with four new best friends. I'd giddily rub off any one of those from the to-do list I wrote in eyeliner on my hotel bathroom mirror. ~ Christy Heron

Well, I grew up on the blues, man! ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Knowing themselves to be faultless, they make it their mission to detect the myriad faults in others, against which they wage incessant tongue. ~ Heron Carvic

I cannot afford to watch Fox News. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Not to say surprise no. Too smooth by half I've always thought him. ~ Heron Carvic

Womenfolk raised me, and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

You have to learn and keep learning. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

February 2009
January 4. January 4. January 4. I rubbed the paper on my red calendar. I cried into the little box, into the last day we had sex.
I was a tornado. I puked hurricanes.
I was Jodi Arias. There were no more tears for him.
Swirling eddies of vodka, pills, fattening food, and tears. Vortexes corralled other vortexes. They joined forces with the eyes of other storms far out into the Gulf, and Atlantic, and castrated my heart first, then everything below the neck. Fuck the heart; my brain was mauled into mush. He didn't have a heart - and possibly, neither did I. The heart had nothing to do with a whirlpool of circles and left and rights I navigated. ~ Christy Heron

The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Lynx stood and raced to the camp. "Attend to our injured!" She unsheathed a machete and made for Hare's killer.
Heron grabbed her wrist. "Wait. He's still conscious."
"Then he will feel my machete," she replied, voice like ice. ~ Gwynn White

With snow piling all round the door
And many a log on the stove
Where the chickadee's singing a comforting song:
"I'm sure it's you that I love."

O let the wolves howl, they won't find us here
By soft oil lamp we will lie
Now winter is nigh let us fly to my log cabin home in the sky. ~ Mike Heron

Life is Everlasting Fields of Indescribable Love ~ Matthew Heron