Bird By Bird Quotes

#1. You can safely assume you've remade God in your own image when it turns out God hates the same people you do. Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Janis Bragan Balda

#2. Just take it bird by bird

Anne Lamott

#3. Most cats feel that bird-catching is their duty; the instinct goes back to prehistoric times. Amber keeps in practice by chasing moths.

Gladys Taber

#4. There was a heavy, dark pause of vast significance.
Which Jim broke by flashing his hands and belting out, "Booga-wooga!"
At least Eddie laughed. Adrian flipped Jim the bird and headed to the fridge for another beer.

J.R. Ward

#5. I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day ...

Robert Frost

#6. The birds are the saints, who fly to heaven on the wings of contemplation, who are so removed from the world that they have no business on earth. They do not labour, but by contemplation alone they already live in heaven.

Anthony Of Padua

#7. I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.

Yukio Mishima

#8. Shall we make a new rule of life ... Always try to be a little kinder than us necessary? ['The little white bird' by JM Barrie]

R.J. Palacio

#9. Has it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the eyes of birds when we wish them to sing?

Jean Paul

#10. People like me really shouldn't be allowed to build a people house until we've managed to build a bird house that isn't immediately condemned as uninhabitable by the avian building department.

Robert Kroese

#11. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

John Burroughs

#12. Battered by the mind noise, huddled in the back with eyes closed and fists clenched, the old Melissa had understood pep rallies about as well as a bird sucked through a jet engine comprehended aircraft design.

Scott Westerfeld

#13. As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far.

Francois Fenelon

#14. An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which drives the migrating bird across the sea. . . .

C. G. Jung

#15. But Nature too, shakes off her sleep today; By May's mild sun we see reviv'd her frame, Around my window Venus' birds proclaim, The month most cherish'd backwards bends his way!

Alphonse De Lamartine

#16. Don't judge a bird by its feathers;
judge it by how high it can fly.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#17. No one has ever built a statue to a critic, it's true. On the other hand, it's only the people with statues that get pooped on by birds flying by.

Seth Godin

#18. If a fox shall bear down upon the rabbit and take its neck between its teeth, the rabbit shall understand, for the rabbit itself bites down upon the grasses of the field. And as the large insect eats the smaller, it too is eaten, by a bird that flushes down from the air to complete a cycle.

Erika Mailman

#19. I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact.

Isabella Bird

#20. I have learned something about the job of being the President's wife. She is not chosen by anyone except her husband and she really has no obligations except to him.

Lady Bird Johnson

#21. I'm still not sure what is meant by good fortune and success. I know fame and power are for the birds. But then life suddenly comes into focus for me. And, ah, there stand my kids.

Lee Iacocca

#22. If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. So blow your nose.

Truman Capote

#23. I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence.

Peter Ustinov

#24. God continually turns you from one state of feeling to another, revealing truth by means of opposites.... So that you may have the two wings of fear and hope; for the bird with one wing is unable to fly....

Jalaluddin Rumi

#25. I've always loved stories of animals and birds that can appear to be human, just by taking off their skins or their feathers.

Delia Sherman

#26. On still another road, a green-haired man wobbled by on peppermint-stick stilts; a fiery-plumed bird of paradise perched on his shoulder. But he's not in this story, so don't pay any attention to him.

Christopher Healy

#27. Bugs are a great pest in Colorado. They come out of the earth, infest the wooden walls, and cannot be got rid of by any amount of cleanliness. Many careful housewives take their beds to pieces every week and put carbolic acid on them.

Isabella Bird

#28. Seeing me surrounded by paper towels on the floor, Morpheus lifts his eyebrows. "Building a nest?" he asks. "There's no need to start acting like a bird simply because you have a propensity for flying.

A.G. Howard

#29. It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#30. In all his trials he felt encouraged and sometimes even upbourne by a secret force within. The soul helps the body, and at certain moments uplifts it. It is the only bird which sustains its cage.

Victor Hugo

#31. How do you catch a beautiful bird without killing it? By becoming the sky.

Antero Alli

#32. The soul of man, like the bird in the shell, is still growing or ripening in sin or grace, till at last the shell breaks by death, and the soul flies away to the piece it is prepared for, and where it must abide forever.

John Flavel

#33. While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, he who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course.

Larry Bird

#34. Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words
"
"You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.

Norton Juster

#35. Touch my baby and I will string you up by your ankles, bird. I will pluck your feathers one by one then douse you in some flour and seasoning before I deep fry you a crispy golden brown.

Eve Langlais

#36. I'd fly. I sit and watch the birds go by and say, I wish I could do that.

Kristin Kreuk

#37. There is a bird in a poem by T. S. Eliot who says that mankind cannot bear very much reality; but the bird is mistaken. A man can endure the entire weight of the universe for eighty years. It is unreality that he cannot bear.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#38. In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her.

Catherynne M Valente

#39. If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.

Henry David Thoreau

#40. If one's memories of Baghdad women were only of those to be seen in the streets, they would be of leathery, wrinkled faces, prematurely old, figures which have lost all shape, and henna-stained hands crinkled and deformed by toil.

Isabella Bird

#41. Back home, I ate Bojangles chicken with Bird and watched a rerun of 'Bones.' For some reason, the cat is nuts about Hodgins.

(From Dr. Tempe Brennan in "Bones Never Lie" by Kathy Reichs. It made me chuckle!)

Kathy Reichs

#42. Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wildflowers.

Lady Bird Johnson

#43. As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them.

Anandamayi Ma

#44. How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

William Blake

#45. That bird is too clever by half.

George R R Martin

#46. In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#47. Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

Ivan Pavlov

#48. It's as if someone fashioned a small golden bird and then attached a ring around it. The bird is connected to the ring only by its wing tips.

Suzanne Collins

#49. Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms ... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest ... within a forest ... a thousand years ago.

Milan Kundera

#50. Like a bird handled by humans whose flock would not accept it back, Rob now wore the unwashable scent of the Ivy League.

Jeff Hobbs

#51. The Tigris is so fierce and rapid, and swallows its alluvial banks so greedily, that it is probable that some of the buildings described by the Hebrew traveller Benjamin of Tudela as existing in the twelfth century were long since carried away.

Isabella Bird

#52. It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.

Lady Bird Johnson

#53. He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

Khalil Gibran

#54. I have a heart-shaped hole. Like an empty bird's next, it rests among marigold-hued ruffles above the topmost hook of my corset.
The hole was not left by something removed, but for something anticipated.

Sharon Lynn Fisher

#55. The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a giant, benevolent bird rescued him and became his guardian angel. This tale thrilled me; I've always wanted to write about it.

Porochista Khakpour

#56. Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#57. I have been in the field working with my birds for 36 years and I don't think a day goes by that I don't see or learn something new.

Steve Madden

#58. What we see of the world is the mind's
Invention and the mind
Though stained by it, becoming
Rivers, sun, mule-dung, flies-
Can instantly shift
A dirty bird in square time

Phillip Whalen

#59. I can't believe I'm being coerced by a bird.

Cate Rowan

#60. And what has become of it, where is that onetime love? Now it is the grave of a bird, a drop of black quartz, a chunk of wood eroded by the rain.

Pablo Neruda

#61. The old stories must be learned anew, studied again within the context of a world at odds with itself and only able to be redeemed by the brush of the wing of the great bird of spirit.

Michael Meade

#62. We are each of us a bird in a body. In the space between bodies lies a solitude formed by the vibration of differing thoughts.

Meia Geddes

#63. Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.

Truman Capote

#64. I can't relate to the process of just disappearing and writing a record, all at the same time, followed by the sort of drudgery of going out on tour and trying to recreate the record, playing the same 12 songs every night.

Andrew Bird

#65. Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it.

Oscar Wilde

#66. Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I'm inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It's so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.

Alexander McQueen

#67. I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah into the air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by an hallelujah.

Clarice Lispector

#68. I think that Vegas is one of the wildest places I've ever been to. You can look to your left and there's a drag queen getting married by Elvis, to the right there is some old bird sticking quarters into a slot machine for hours.

Marsha Thomason

#69. The fact that I wasn't expected to read music at all and was absorbing everything by ear ... it had a huge affect on the kind of musician that I became.

Andrew Bird

#70. An American store is generally a very extensive apartment, handsomely decorated, the roof frequently supported on marble pillars. The owner or clerk is seen seated by his goods, absorbed in the morning paper - probably balancing himself on one leg of his chair, with a spittoon by his side.

Isabella Bird

#71. At every turn you have to find a new kind of self-sovereignty over your environment. Every kid I see is at the mercy of Periscope, Twitter, or an Angry Bird of some description. People are shackled to their mediocrity by companies and businesses who want to consume your life with theirs.

Daniel Gillies

#72. For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the primary way by which it knows itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.

John Burnside

#73. The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.

Victor Hugo

#74. another. A single bird flew by at eye level, then shot straight up to the treetops. A grasshopper landed suddenly on my wrist. Creepy magic.

Gillian Flynn

#75. (The) Gray wagtail ... doesn't look like much, does he? Hardly a couple of ounces of feathers and bones. But that bird can fly to Africa and back. Powered by bugs and worms and desire.

Anthony Doerr

#76. Four hours after leaving Kornah, we passed the reputed tomb of Ezra the prophet. At a distance and in the moonlight it looked handsome. There is a buttressed river wall, and above it some long flat-roofed buildings, the centre one surmounted by a tiled dome.

Isabella Bird

#77. By any definition, what happened in Bhutan in the years 1989-93 was ethnic cleansing. The Bhutanese government denies this and has refused to repatriate any of those forcibly expelled.

Kai Bird

#78. Years should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or consider them? In the world of wild Nature, time is measured by seasons only-the bird does not know how old it is-the rose-tree does not count its birthdays!

Marie Corelli

#79. But finally, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, isn't that just what life is? Aren't we all trapped in the dark somewhere, and they've taken away our food and water, and we're slowly dying, little by little ... ?

Haruki Murakami

#80. LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg "pate".

Ambrose Bierce

#81. He had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an ill-formed notion of their appearance.

Cormac McCarthy

#82. One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children - only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old.

Isabella Bird

#83. edge of the box. "Hungry, are you?" laughed Zack as the bird pecked the feeds. "Eat some more, pretty little things!" said Clare as the others flew one by one to Zack. It was a fine and cold morning, and feeding the birds is the beginning of a wonderful day for Zack and Clare. When

N.S. Esther

#84. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

Anne Lamott

#85. By going and coming, a bird weaves its nest.

Ashanti

#86. It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

Alexander Pope

#87. How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

Virginia Woolf

#88. Parents do not, indeed, live by bread alone. We feast daily on banquets of our own words.

Sarah Bird

#89. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was a s fragile as a bird's heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood.

Kate Atkinson

#90. Showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.

William C. Bryant

#91. The American crow is at an all-time low of 82 birds. Others hit by the West Nile, like the black-capped chickadee, have rebounded.

Jeff Chapman

#92. Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of Japan and the noisy hurry of China! Its endless afternoon remains unbroken except by the dreamy, colored, slow-moving Malay life which passes below the hill. There is never any hurry or noise.

Isabella Bird

#93. Right now the day length is exactly the same as in spring when birds key into it and begin singing. The birds are a little confused by it all and the singing isn't very intense. It only lasts a week or so each fall, but it's still cool to hear spring bird songs at this time of the year.

Craig Thompson

#94. I might not get what I want out of her by asking, but I have other methods of making this little bird sing.

Georgia Cates

#95. The great black bird broods outside my window in the high dark night waiting to enfold me when I leave the house tomorrow only I'm going to dodge it successfully by sheer animalism and ability and even exhilaration, so goodnight

Jack Kerouac

#96. Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram
it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.

Anne Lamott

#97. Soon the Mississippi night hummed by outside his windows, bug, bird, frog, the wind on his face.

Tom Franklin

#98. I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

John Coltrane

#99. Aaron's therapist calls him a wounded bird, but, I ask you, who wouldn't care for a wounded bird? What kind of person sees a bird with a broken wing, cat on the horizon, and walks on by?

David James Poissant

#100. The carnal contact side by side, from heel to armpit, brings shudders that shake up nature like the flights of nocturnal birds.

Louis Aragon