Trumpeter Swan Quotes

Dilemmas of the Angels: Flight"

Before the angel there was something else -
not this coffee shop next to a drug rehabilitation center
filled with war veterans of the past, men and women
strapped to their chairs, birds straining to rise
from piles of feathers, bones, and blood.

Drenched in sweat and a little shaky
from too much caffeine, she takes flight,
a shining white-winged trumpeter swan
crossing open water, steam rising
from the feathers' barbs. Below her,
a cormorant, unfolding its black wings,
explodes from the surface, and even fish,
leaping from the oily sheen, glide
for a moment, gills pumping
in the poisonous atmosphere.

Such longing. How large
the muscles in our shoulders must be
to lift our wings even a single time. ~ David Romtvedt

The trumpeter is beautiful to behold, graceful and elegant, just like our Ms. Swan. But if you disturb a trumpeter, trespass through its territory, or threaten its nest, it will hiss like a cobra and attack with the viciousness of a wolf. That is the black swan side. ~ Suzanne Selfors

I'd rather die than be with anyone but you. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I waited a century to marry you miss swan ~ Stephenie Meyer

Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum. ~ Fred Reed

Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan. ~ E.B. White

Shiva ... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan; The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things. Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme, Empty darkness under the death-tent wings. She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood, Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed. ~ Robinson Jeffers

She stared at them with yearning. Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. ~ George R R Martin

A swan is beautiful, even if mocked by ugly ducks. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Can I get my swans?" Reyna asked.
Hildar turned to her. "Freya does not have swans."
"Right," Matt said. "I got that wrong. Sorry. Freya is said to be the leader of the Valkyries, who are swan maidens."
"We are not swan maidens," Hildar said, straightening and lifting her sword.
"But you can turn into swans."
"No, we are not swans."
"Not even vicious killer swans?" Reyna asked.
"No."
"Okay, but I'm still your leader, right, Like Matt said, Freya -"
"No." Hildar hesitated. "You are not battle proven. You may lead us one day. But we are still not swans. ~ K.L. Armstrong

That day and night, the bleeding and the screaming, had knocked something askew for Esme, like a picture swinging crooked on a wall. She loved the life she lived with her mother. It was beautiful. It was, she sometimes thought, a sweet emulation of the fairy tales they cherished in their lovely, gold-edged books. They sewed their own clothes from bolts of velvet and silk, ate all their meals as picnics, indoors or out, and danced on the rooftop, cutting passageways through the fog with their bodies. They embroidered tapestries of their own design, wove endless melodies on their violins, charted the course of the moon each month, and went to the theater and the ballet as often as they liked--every night last week to see Swan Lake again and again. Esme herself could dance like a faerie, climb trees like a squirrel, and sit so still in the park that birds would come to perch on her. Her mother had taught her all that, and for years it had been enough. But she wasn't a little girl anymore, and she had begun to catch hints and glints of another world outside her pretty little life, one filled with spice and poetry and strangers. ~ Laini Taylor

Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When we accept bad art because it's good politics, we're killing the swan to feed the chickens. ~ Tom Robbins

My heart is not brave or big. It is not cruel either. It is not strong at all. I keep it within this iron cage for a reason. Breathe on it wrong and I will die ... Just go now. I would rather let you see my face, than my heart.'
Laertes, Count of Samothrace ~ Rebecca Ashe

In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I would love to branch out a little bit and ... do a Judd Apatow type of movie. It just looks like it's so much fun. ~ Serinda Swan

Once I saw torches with dancing flames of scarlet and radiant gold held by solemn apes. A man with the horns and muzzled face of a bull bent over me, a constellation sprung to life. I spoke to him and found myself telling him that I was unsure of the precise date of my birth, that if his benign spirit of meadow and unfeigning force had governed my life I thanked him for it; then remembered that I knew the date, that my father had given a ball for me each year until his death, that it fell under the Swan. He listened intently, turning his head to watch me from one brown eye. ~ Gene Wolfe

The narrative fallacy, Bezos explained, was a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan to describe how humans are biologically inclined to turn complex realities into soothing but oversimplified stories. ~ Anonymous

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl
His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white. ~ Ovid

I was wrong, you were right. I'm dumb, you're smart. I'm ugly, and you're a stone-cold fox. ~ Toooldforthis

All I wanted was to love him as much as possible in the limited time given to me. ~ Stephenie Meyer

This guilt was an invisible but heavy albatross hanging around my neck. (That's a reference to Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) I wear that bird like Björk wore her swan dress. I wave from a red carpet leading to hell. ~ Myriam Gurba

You are my business! ~ Stephenie Meyer

I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You are so bizarre, even for a human."
"Thanks. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Soar to the sky of emptiness,
Fly like a swan in flight.
This is the art of mindfulness;
The path is full of light. ~ Banani Ray

"When you left
he left
you took everything with you. But the absence of him is everywhere I look." - Bella Swan, New Moon ~ Stephenie Meyer

If Edward Cullen had of been ugly I'm sure Bella Swan wouldn't have been quite so smitten with him coming into her bedroom to watch her sleep at night. We females can be strange, shallow creatures when the mood takes us. ~ L. H. Cosway

You just didn't bring a pitchfork to a swan fight. ~ T. Kingfisher

You are quarter ghost on your mother's side.
Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box.
Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet.
A reflecting pool gathers around your altar
of plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats.
You are rag doll prone. You are contort,
angle and arc. Here you rot. Here
you are a greening abdomen, slipping skin,
flesh fly, carrion beetles.
This is where bullets take shelter,
where scythes find their function, breath loses
its place on the page. This is where the page is torn
out of every book before chapter's close,
this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglect
pulled over the body, this
is your chance to escape.
Little wraith,
bend light around your skin until it colors you clear,
disappear like silica in a kiln, become
glass and glass beads, become
the staggered whir of an exhaust fan:
something only noticed
when gone. Become
an origami swan. Fold yourself smaller
than ever before. Become less. More
in some ways but less
in the way a famine is less. They will
forgive you for not being satisfied
with fitting in their hands.
They will forgive you
for dying to be
a bird diminutive enough
to fit in a mouth and not be crushed. ~ Jamaal May

It's difficult dating as an actor because your free time is precious. The guy I end up with someday is going to have to love traveling. ~ Serinda Swan

If troubled companies want to explain away 2008 as a 'black swan,' then someone should take responsibility for creating the oil slick that seems to have tarred the entire flock! ~ Andrew Lo

Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.' ~ Robert Gottlieb

Operation Pedro Pan
It was like a raging wildfire that the Radio Swan story spread throughout Cuba! Many affluent Cubans, convinced that their children would actually be sent to Moscow for political indoctrination, panicked and sent their children to Florida. In all, as many as 14,000 Cuban children were airlifted to Miami, under a program named "Operation Peter Pan." During the next two years, British Airways, under charter, flew many of the children to the United States by way of Kingston, Jamaica.
The unaccompanied children started arriving in Miami in October of 1960. They arrived in waves, with the children of the more affluent families coming first. Their parents trusted their friends and family in the United States to take care of their children. Since the Castro régime was having economic difficulties very few people thought that it would last as long as it did. Most of them still believed that Castro was just a passing phenomenon until a counter-revolution would depose him. ~ Hank Bracker

A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan. ~ Juvenal

Kenneth Tynan once said that the only people who can do Russian drama, outside of the Russians themselves, are the Irish. I presume that's because we are somewhat manic in the mood department. It's no bother to soar from the darkest depths to the mountaintops of delight, with the heart borne by all of that which is alive and singing. It's even less bother to swan-dive into the pits of despair and total hopelessness, with the realization that it's no use being Irish unless you know the world is eventually going to break your heart. ~ Malachy McCourt

A footfall crunched behind him. He turned to see Reyna heading his way with the cat at her side. He grinned at them, and Reyna stopped short, glancing over her shoulder as if looking for the cause of his grin.
"Someone spike you prefight Gatorade?" she asked.
"No, I'm just happy to see -" He rocked back on his heels. "Happy to see the cat is still with you. Have you picked a name yet?"
"What are my options again?"
"Trjegul, Bygul, and Heyyu."
"Tree-gool and Bee-gool?" she said. "And Hey-yu?" She stopped. "Hey, you. Oh. Ha-ha. Leave comedy to the professionals, Thorsen."
He shrugged. "You could always ask the cat what her name is."
"Nope. I pick Trjegul." She looked down at the calico. "You're Trjegul now. Even if you're really Bygul."
The cat only blinked.
"So if I call you by your name, you'll come, right?"
Trjegul got up and wandered off in the other direction.
"Watch out or I'll trade you for a swan!" Reyna called after her. "A giant, killer stealth swan that eats ungrateful kitties for breakfast. ~ K.L. Armstrong

I hated Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Well what would you have us do, Jason? Swan into a hardware store without any cash and say "give us your best rack or we'll set the adorable button-nosed robots on you for bunny-boiler death by cuddling?" Jared Thomas in Red Gods Sing ~ Trevor Barton

About 3 things i was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him, and i didnt know how dominant that part might be, that thirsted for my blood. And third, i was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him. ~ Bella Swan

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved. ~ Rose Fall

But you will know the more you get it touch with your transcendental mind (and therefore truth) that there is no such thing as a victim. The negative benefits you more than anything else in your evolution and the evolution of all that is. ~ Teal Swan

Losing a parent is a hard thing ... I often sit here and think it would be great if mum and dad were alive and had a chance to see their grandkids grow up. ~ Wayne Swan

You're everything I've ever dreamed of and more, sweetheart. Don't ever doubt that." Vic nuzzled his hair. "Does it bother you that I can't fertilize your eggs? I don't want you to regret staying with me when you could be with another swan and hatch young with them."
Kellan pulled back, drawing his eyebrows together. "But, you don't know that for sure. Why would we be fated mates if you can't fertilize my eggs? I think there's still a chance. ~ M.M. Wilde

In Australia, we've always been a country that runs the ball right up the middle on the fifth tackle. We've never seen a challenge we didn't like, and we've certainly never run from one. ~ Wayne Swan

I'm proud of my hands; they look like my grandma's. ~ Serinda Swan