Magpie Quotes

Over a pint in the pub, you have a good moan
That's the fate of every Magpie
While Mam perfects her game show skills
Giving talks at the WI ~ John Walter Bratton

The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below. ~ John Clare

The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I'm not making any judgement. It's just the sort of thing I can't help but notice. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story. ~ Walter Kirn

I think I need to spend some time with safari but what arrests my attention are salient, sadomasochism, saccadic, and salad days. I think I will go learn more about coral only to learn a lot more about corollary and counterturn and coffin nail. I go from magnificence to means to marquee to maniac to distyle, ductile, hindsight, shell game, veronica, yardstick, ball field, magpie, variegated, and close shave. ~ Dara Wier

Now these remarks caused a great deal of resentment, hatred, misery, bloodshed, and death. The creatures began to quarrel, and then to wage war with one another. The owl families were continually in disagreement with the hawk families. Neither the hawk families nor the owl families would listen to the entreaties of the swan families to live in peace with them. The magpie quarrelled with every bird and with the smaller animals, especially the mouse and rat families. ~ W. Ramsay Smith

A magpie, seeing some light-colored object conspicuous on the empty slope, flew closer to look. but all that lay there was a splintered peg and a twisted length of wire. ~ Richard Adams

I always accessorize with jewelry. I am a bit of a magpie; I love sparkles, and so wearing jewelry makes me feel more exciting and confident, too! ~ Amber Le Bon

He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I try not to be superstitious, but, you know, we never put any shoes on the table. That's totally against the law in our house. And I always salute when I see one magpie. ~ Neneh Cherry

She blushed and I smiled when we saw the Magpie look at us while we kissed below the Acacia tree! ~ Avijeet Das

The parental eye shed no tears when the time for leave-taking came; a half-rouble in copper coins was given to the boy by way of pocket-money and for sweets, and what is more important, the following admonition:

"Mind now, Pavlusha, be diligent, don't fool or gad about, and above all please your teachers and superiors. If you please your superiors, then you will be popular and get ahead of everyone even if you lag behind in knowledge and talent. Don't be too friendly with the other boys, they will teach you no good; but if you do make friends, cultivate those who are better off and might be useful. Don't invite or treat anyone, but conduct yourself in such a way as to be treated yourself, and above all, take care of and save your pennies, that is the most reliable of all things. A comrade or friend will cheat you and be the first to put all the blame on you when in a fix, but the pennies won't betray you in any difficulty. With money you can do anything in the world."

Having admonished his son thus, the father took leave of him and trundled off home on his 'magpie'. Though from that day the son never set eyes on him more, his words and admonitions had sunk deep into his soul. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Alan invented all sorts of ways of expressing things so that only he and I understood. He used language as a place for us to hide. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That's one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You're part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Is that food?" Shiro asked, pointing at the large paper bag in Yumei's hand.

Emi blinked at the bag. "Is that a takeout bag? How did you order takeout?"

"I stole it. I have no idea what it contains."

"It smells good, at least," Shiro said optimistically. As he crossed the room, his arm brushed hers, sending a little warm shiver through her. Relieving Yumei of the bag, he dropped down at the table and shoved the broken teacup out of the way.

Yumei hissed angrily.

"It's just a cup. You have too much junk. Are you a raven or a magpie?"

The crows swooped down and landed on the table as Shiro ripped the bag open to investigate its contents. Emi tried not to think about the unlucky human who was now mysteriously short his dinner. Yumei started picking up pieces of the tea cup, his expressionless face vaguely gloomy as he collected its remains. ~ Annette Marie

Mountain Center"
Maureen McLane


The cords are strong
a loose weave strung
between white pines.

Now I will offer
a transcript of today's news
and you'll know it

as conceptual poetry
as this hammock
is a plagiarism

of all other hammocks
in all poems & the world.
My dream of originality

a copy
of an idea
no one had.

Like everyone
"I have wasted my life."

Magpie day
mockingbird night
cuckoo mind ~ Maureen McLane

Pünd remembered their first case together when Fraser had failed to notice that his travelling companion, on the three-fifty train from Paddington, was actually dead. ~ Anthony Horowitz

The nearest arched window poured its soft light over him, allowing me to see
every inch. Dressed smartly in black loafers and slacks, he wore a thigh-length, black
coat. He'd brushed his golden hair back, tucked behind his ears, and his cheeks looked
flushed, no doubt due to the bitter, evening air.
He looks like an angel in the winter snow. The thought made me growl in irritation.
"Hello, Magpie."
I couldn't move. "Adrian. ~ Elizabeth Morgan

I'm such a magpie. I'll get halfway through one thing and pick up something else. I always have 5 or 6 books open and spine-up by my bed: it's like a row of tents. I don't finish nearly as many books as I should. ~ Steven Hall

In return, Joe taught Jay more about the garden. Slowly the boy learned to tell lavender from rosemary from hyssop from sage. He learned to taste soil- a pinch between the finger and thumb slipped under the tongue, like a man testing fine tobacco- to determine its acidity. He learned how to calm a headache with crushed lavender, or a stomachache with peppermint. He learned to prepare skullcap tea and chamomile to aid sleep. He learned to plant marigolds in the potato patch to discourage parasites and to pick nettles from the top to make ale and to fork the sign against the evil eye if ever a magpie flew past. ~ Joanne Harris

A magpie flies like a frying pan!'8 he could write, with the joy of discovering something new in the world. And it is that joy, that childish delight in the lives of creatures other than man, that I love most in White. He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one. But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles. ~ Helen Macdonald

He leaned forward to inspect her closer. "Is that all hair?"
... Sudden, overwhelming panic clawed up Cress's throat. With a squeak, she ducked out of view of the camera and scrambled beneath the desk. Her back struck the wall with a thud that rattled her teeth. She crouched there, skin burning hot and pulse thundering as she took in the room before her - the room that he was now seeing too, with the rumpled bedcovers and the mustached man on all the screens telling her to grab her imaginary partner and swing them around.
"Wha - where'd she go?" Thorne's voice came to her through the screen.
"Honestly, Thorne." A girl. Linh Cinder? "Do you ever think before you speak?"
"What? What did I say?"
" 'Is that all hair?' "
"Did you see it? It was like a cross between a magpie nest and ball of yarn after it's been mauled by a cheetah."
A beat. Then, "A cheetah?"
"It was the first big cat that came to mind. ~ Marissa Meyer

The room was a magpie-nest of picked-at knowledge, the lair of a tinkerer to whom the universe was one vast toyshop of intriguing side issues. ~ Barbara Hambly

If I was a painter, and was to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it? ... I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam. for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it -' ... 'And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky! ~ Charles Dickens

The Magpie took off her glove and looked scornfully at him. Basta likes to use snakes to scare woman that reject his advances. It didn't work with Resa. How did it go exactly - didn't she finally put the snake outside your door, Basta? ~ Cornelia Funke

If I could be said to have any kind of aesthetic, it's sort of a magpie aesthetic - I just go and pick up whatever is around. If you think about it, the children were there, so I took pictures of my children. It's not that I'm interested in children that much or photographing them - it's just that they were there ... ~ Sally Mann

I have a magpie mind, by which I mean I see and hear little things - photos, fragments of conversation - and store them away for future use. ~ Laurie Graham

You'd have thought that after twenty years editing murder mysteries I'd have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one. ~ Anthony Horowitz

That all hair?'" "Did you see it? It was like a cross between a magpie nest and ball of yarn after it's been mauled by a cheetah." A beat. Then, "A cheetah? ~ Marissa Meyer

I like sparkles; I think I'm a magpie. ~ Paloma Faith

Economics ought to be a magpie discipline, taking in philosophy, history and politics. But heterodox approaches have long since been banished from most faculties, claims Tony Lawson. In the 1970s, when he started teaching at Cambridge, the economics faculty still boasted legends such as Nicky Kaldor and Joan Robinson. "There were big debates, and students would study politics, the history of economic thought." And now? "Nothing. No debates, no politics or history of economic thought and the courses are nearly all maths."
How do elites remain in charge? If the tale of the economists is any guide, by clearing out the opposition and then blocking their ears to reality. The result is the one we're all paying for. ~ Aditya Chakrabortty

I had chosen to play the detective - and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I've ever read about, it's their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn't actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn't trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It's a relationship based entirely on deception and it's one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I never really understood who the Magi were as a child. What is a Magi? Not a word I would use, but a magpie I could understand. ~ Michael Leunig

In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor - and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us - the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all. ~ Anthony Horowitz

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's 'The Thieving Magpie,' which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. ~ Haruki Murakami

The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had not yet taken form. Black and white, he said. Presence and absence. ~ Kate Mosse

Much later that night, I thought the door opened and a man came into the bedroom. He was leaning on a stick. He didn't say anything but he stood there, looking sadly at Andreas and me, and as a shaft of moonlight came slanting in through the window, I recognized Atticus Pünd. I was asleep, of course, and dreaming, but I remember wondering how he had managed to enter my world before the thought occurred to me that maybe it was I who had entered his. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I'm a real magpie when it comes to music; it's all random, and there's no pattern to what I like. ~ Rhys Ifans

But you know me-I'm an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I've never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much. ~ Tim Pratt

I'm like a magpie. I use lots of different things to build a character. ~ Andrew Lincoln

A magpie can be happy or sad: sometimes so happy that he sits on a high, high gum tree and rolls the sunrise around in his throat like beads of pink sunlight; and sometimes so sad that you would expect the tears to drip off his beak.
This magpie was like that. ~ Colin Thiele

Memory is a magpie after chips of colored glass and ribbon rather than the upright accuracy of objective sequence. ~ Larry Woiwode

I've watched every episode of Poirot and Midsomer Murders on TV. I never guess the ending and I can't wait for the moment when the detective gathers all the suspects in the room and, like a magician conjuring silk scarves out of the air, makes the whole thing make sense. ~ Anthony Horowitz

The child chattered like a little magpie, and Angel nodded and listened. Glancing up, Angel encountered Michael's gaze. He wants children, she thought, and the thought hit her solid in the pit of her stomach. What if he knew she couldn't have them? Would his love for her die then? She couldn't hold his gaze. ~ Francine Rivers

The crimson satin lining gleamed in the firelight, and so, too, did his eyes. When he looked up at her, there was a mist to them once again.
"Little magpie," he whispered as he looked at the black onyx ring. "You gave up everything for this, didn't you?"
She nodded. "That is how much I trust you. Everything I had hidden away in that biscuit jar went to this. All my worldly goods are in that ring, Jude."
"Then I will take it and hold it close, and never give you cause for regret." He put the ring on his index finger, and Isabella grinned. How perfect it looked - how utterly sensual. She wanted that ringed hand on her body, comforting her. Loving her. ~ Charlotte Featherstone

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards ... It's a magpie Christmas market. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching. ~ W.B. Yeats

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle
and a black dog running behind.
Cobwebs snatched at his feet,
rivers hindered him,
thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind
and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,
but he didn't mind.
I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out
any spider I meet,
said he to his dog and his rifle.

The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks
with his old black hat on his head.
Mountains jumped in his way,
rocks rolled down on him,
and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead.
And the rain came down like mattocks.
But he only said,
I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day,
and he went on over the paddocks.

When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling,
Up came the night ready to swallow him,
like the barrel of a gun,
like an old black hat,
like a black dog hungry to follow him.
Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing
and the grass lay down to pillow him.
His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling.

But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain,
just as his heart foretold.
He ran like a hare,
he climbed like a fox;
he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold -
like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain,
like a ring of gold.
Judith A. Wright

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order
that is, according to their notions of the matter
and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days. ~ William Hazlitt

Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it. ~ Alice Oswald