Mocking Birds Quotes

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd
alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother - from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither - ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man - yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them - but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing. ~ Walt Whitman

Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art. ~ Tom Robbins

….unable to find a title for her last published novel, she wrote six lines which included her eventual title The Birds Fall Down. These lines were attributed to Conway Power (the name she generally appended to her poetry, even in her private notebooks), from a non-existent poem called 'Guide to a Disturbed Planet.' When the novel was published she had fun deflecting the enquiries of readers who wanted to know how to find the works of Conway Power. One was told a long story: Conway Power was a landowner in a remote area who had written thousands of poems and destroyed most of them. He had left some of them with her, given his property to a nephew, and gone abroad. 'If I can trace the book (if there is a book) I'll let you know. ~ Victoria Glendinning

Most of the rare species seemed to be very fond of clover, particularly red clover, and other wild legumes such as tufted vetch and bird's-foot trefoil, probably because these plants provide pollen that is unusually rich in protein. ~ Dave Goulson

I think of my chastened surprise when Mabel played with a paper telescope. She is real. She can resist the meanings humans give her. But the condor? The condor has no resistance to us at all. I stare at the attenuated, drifting image on the gallery screen. It is a shadow, a figure of loss and hope; it is hardly a bird at all. ~ Helen Macdonald

Fish have got to swim. Birds have got to fly, and Clintons have to run for office. It's what they do. It's a metabolic urge. That's all they've done their entire life is borrow money from rich people to seek public office. ~ George Will

Across the street, there were parties at other windows. The sky was fading behind the roof peaks and chimney tops, which stood out like cardboard cutout silhouettes, and I looked from them to the lit windows, and back again. A flock of birds, pigeons probably, wheeled across the sky, heading home before dark. ~ Jo Walton

And then I went back to face the future memories that had been flapping around in my mind like wounded birds. ~ Cyn Balog

But I know somebody must be thinking about us because if they weren't we'd just disappear just like those Indians who used to climb the pueblos. Those Indians disappeared with food still cooking in the pot and air waiting to be breathed and they turned into birds or dust or the blue of the sky or the yellow of the sun.
There they were and suddenly they were forgotten for just a second and for just a second nobody thought about them and then they were gone. ~ Sherman Alexie

They hacked down trees widening rings around their central halls and blistered the land with peasant huts and pigeon fences till the forest looked like an old dog dying of mange. they thinned out the game, killed birds for sport, set accidental fire that would burn for days. their sheep killed hedges, snipped valleys bare, and their pigs nosed up the very roots of what might have grown. hrothgar's tribe made boats to drive farther north and west. there was nothing to stop the advance of man. huge boars fled at the click of a harness. wolves would cower in the glens like foxes when they caught that deadly scent. i was filled with a wordless, obscurely murderous unrest. ~ John Gardner

It's clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another. ~ Robert James Waller

I was in bed at my beach house, but could not sleep because of some fried chicken in the icebox that I felt entitled to. I waited till my wife dropped off, and tiptoed into the kitchen. I remembered looking at the clock. It was precisely four-fifteen. I'm quite certain of this, because our kitchen clock has not worked in twenty-one years and is always at that time. I also noticed that our dog, Judas, was acting funny. He was sanding up on his hind legs and singing, 'I Enjoy Being a Girl.' Suddenly the room turned bright orange. At first, I thought my wife had caught me eating between meals and set fire to the house. Then I looked out the window, where to my amazement I saw a gigantic cigar-shaped aircraft hovering just over the treetops in the yard and emitting an orange glow. I stood transfixed for what must have been several hours, though our clock still read four-fifteen, so it was difficult to tell. Finally, a large, mechanical claw extended from the aircraft and snatched the two pieces of chicken from my hand and quickly retreated. When I reported the incident to the Air Force, they told me that what I had seen was a flock of birds. When I protested, Colonel Quincy Bascomb personally promised that the Air Force would return the two pieces of chicken. To this day, I have only received one piece. ~ Woody Allen

Then the birds flew away, their names turned to kisses, a silence to spell a new world. ~ Jessie Burton

What I saw was just one eye
In the dawn as I was going:
A bird can carry all the sky
In that little button glowing.
Never in my life I went
So deep into the firmament. ~ Harold Monro

I took a bus and then a train, and as soon as I saw that place, saw the girls in their uniforms and the huge library and the computer rooms, I knew I belonged there. The desks weren't graffitied with "Fuck you." The only drawings of anatomy were hanging on the wall. I sat at the station that afternoon feeding small birds, dreaming that I lived in the city. I let three trains leave before I took one home. ~ Cath Crowley

The sun was setting behind a line of trees; it cast a great bird's wing halfway across the field when she finally headed back towards the house. In the warm shade of the first enclosed garden, the datura plants were already releasing pulses of their heady night scent. The coffee aroma of earlier was now a burnt chocolate and earthy spice smell that would deepen with the night. Ellie felt a burning sensation in her nose, like mustard. ~ Deborah Lawrenson

What you see at the Field Museum is only like, 10 percent of the collection. It's birds of paradise and passenger pigeons and in all these drawers that pull out, these specimens come out and it's spectacular. And it worked out. ~ Andrew Bird

While I am watching the birds I believe I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation. ~ Anna Kavan

He was a hot, hot former priest and she wanted to pull a Thorn Birds on his ass. ~ Marjorie M. Liu

He [Cupid] was Love [Eros] reborn. And as he was born after his parents coupled as Love-Birds, he was born with little fluttering wings. ~ Nicholas Chong

We could make a meal
of what's left in this box:
potato, onion, rind of cheese,
elderly egg. We could make
another baby without much
fear, at our age. Name her
Rosa and set her in the yard
with us, pulling weeds,
listening to the birds dusting
their wings in the drive. We
could instead just hold each other
here in the cold house,
and say enough, enough. ~ Rachel Contreni Flynn

As he rounded the corner, he saw two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path. For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose; there was no more planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realized what it was. They were digging a mass grave. He thought of shouting an order to about turn or at least to avert their eyes, but they were almost on it, and some of them had already seen their burial place. The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds. ~ Sebastian Faulks

Birds, birds, birds, I'm a Pet Shop Boy ~ Killa Kyleon

Birds looked like an echo of birds, fat white clouds looked as if they were there to sell you fabric softener or air travel or health insurance. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

In this book industry we have different kinds of birds; excepting one; all having in common that they are ONLY watchers and squawkers at the pond. We have readers, editors, reviewers, interviewers, publishers, marketers, websites, monopolies, and writers. All are better compensated than the writers. Yet the system is totally upside down as those better rewarded are all derivative of what is primary; the writer. Without that person the readers have nothing to read; the editors have nothing to edit; the reviewers have nothing to review; the interviewers have no one to interview; the publishers have nothing to publish; the marketers have nothing to market; the website cannot adware infect 'members,' and the legalized monopolies have nothing to monopolize. So, in effect, this is where the troll steps in. He's kind of a writer; but he's not taking the time to churn out masterpieces. He's just effortlessly telling the vultures exactly what they are. ~ Edward Drobinski

I'm not afraid of death. I just want to be smiling and be proud of the choices I have made when it comes. When I've seen every single corner of this earth and known it as I own it, death will be just another thing left for me to know. And I will be mocking it when it claims me. ~ The Incognito

We can hear your voice
We can hear it through the songs of praise
We can hear it through the birds
We can hear it through the wind
We can hear your voice in our hearts
We can hear your voice in our minds
We can hear you through everyhing ~ April Nichole

Never counted in the "costs" of war are the dead birds, the charred animals the murdered fish, incinerated insects, poisoned water sources, destroyed vegetation. Rarely mentioned is the arrogance of the human race toward other living things with which it shares this planet. All these are forgotten in the fight for markets and ideologies. This arrogance will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species. ~ Arundhati Roy

But stay; suppose you just transport yourself (in imagination) to Alabama, and spend the day with me. I will be your cicerone, will point out to you all the birds and insects, and tell you "all about 'em;" and, as Hood's schoolboy says, "I'll show you the wasp's nest, and everything that can make you comfortable. ~ Philip Henry Gosse

It couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they're full grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going. ~ Shalom Auslander

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets. ~ Samuel Johnson

No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind's whirling wrath. ~ Aeschylus

Water began to drip steadily through the dormer window. Outside, in the treacherous city, a thaw had come, giving the streets the unreliable consistency of wet cardboard. Slow masses of whiteness slid from sloping, grey-slate roofs. The footprints of delivery vans corrugated the slush. First light; and the dawn chorus began, chattering of road-drills, chirrup of burglar alarms, trumpeting of wheeled creatures clashing at corners, the deep whirr of a large olive-green garbage eater, screaming radio-voices from a wooden painter's cradle clinging to the upper storey of a Free House, roar of the great wakening juggernauts rushing awesomely down this long but narrow pathway. From beneath the earth came tremors denoting the passage of huge subterranean worms that devoured and regurgitated human beings, and from the skies the thrum of choppers and the screech of higher, gleaming birds. ~ Salman Rushdie

I've the run of the place, and so i spend some time exploring, climbing steep stairs into thin turrets whose windows give me a bird's-eye view of the land surrounding Spence. I flit past locked doors and dark, paneled rooms that seem more like museum exhibits than living, breathing places. I wander until it is dark and past the time when I should be in bed, not that I think anyone shall be searching for me. ~ Libba Bray

Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise. ~ Michael Ondaatje

As delightful as Dr. Gibson is, she doesn't have the makings of a farmwife."
Ethan's brows lifted. "Are you thinking about taking a wife?"
West shrugged. "The nights can be long and quiet in the country," he admitted. "If I found a woman who was an interesting companion and attractive enough to bed... yes, I'd consider marrying her." He paused. "Better yet if she were educated. A sense of humor would be icing on the cake. Red hair isn't a requirement, but I do have a fatal weakness for it." West's mouth twisted with a self-mocking grin. "Of course, she'd have to be willing to overlook the fact that I was an undisciplined and obnoxious swill-tub until about three years ago." A nearly imperceptible look of bitterness flashed across his face before he masked it.
"Who is she?" Ethan asked softly.
"No one. An imaginary woman." Averting his gaze, West used the toe of his boot to flick a loose pebble to the side of the drive. "Who happens to despise me," he muttered.
Ethan regarded him with sympathetic amusement. "You might be able to change her opinion."
"Only if I could travel back in time and beat my former self to a pulp. ~ Lisa Kleypas

War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment;
We, we alone, Nereids inviolate,
Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant:
Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate. ~ Hilda Doolittle

Why kill two birds with one stone when you could kill ten with a boulder? ~ Ella Summers

Forget birds singing, bells ringing, brooks quaintly babbling over rocks. Choirs of angels could go hang. Her voice, even scratchy and weak, was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. ~ Tessa Dare

what if there was an uncanny moment when all the birds were grounded from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between--all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking's mind would miss it? ~ Kristen Henderson

These are the days when birds come back, a very few, a Bird or two, to take a backward look. ~ Emily Dickinson

'Ornithologists concluded that migratory birds take hundreds of naps as they fly; they also practice unilateral eye closure, in which one eye closes, thereby permitting half the brain to sleep.' Is this what happens when photographers close one eye to look through a viewfinder? If so, they might be operating with only half a brain. Perhaps that explains ... ~ Bill Jay

There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging, No I never saw them at all, Until there was you. ~ Meredith Willson

He had to kiss her. He had to. It was as basic and elemental as his breath, his blood, his very soul. And when he did ...
The earth stopped spinning.
The birds stopped singing.
Everything in the world came to a halt, everything but him and her and the feather-light kiss that connected them. ~ Julia Quinn

There are many words for push, take, shove, carry, load, and no words for love, or happiness, or the sounds which birds make in the morning. ~ Alexander McCall Smith