Bird Song Quotes & Sayings

Over the whole earth- this infinitely small globe that possesses all we know of sunshine and bird song- an unfamiliar blight is creeping: man- man, who has become at last a planetary disease and who would, if his technology yet permitted, pass this infection to another star. — Loren Eiseley

If you become a singing bird, I will be the listening sky so that I will never miss your song. — Debasish Mridha

Song in the Manner of Housman O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera ... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera ... — Ezra Pound

It spread out its wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked its head for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun, and then began to pour forth a torrent of a song. In the afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling. Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity ... For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? — George Orwell

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. — John Keats

How do you know, when you think blue - when you say blue - that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else?

You cannot get a grip on blue.

Blue is the sky, the sea, a god's eye, a devil's tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin's cloak, a monkey's ass. It's a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.

Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.

This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there's nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. 'True blue' is a ruse, a rhyme; it's there, then it's not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color. — Christopher Moore

When we hear the bird sing, it hears only how to love. (Quand on entend l'oiseau chanter, - Lui n'entend que comment aimer.) — Charles De Leusse

Your sons have no names."
Adam replied, "Their mother left them motherless."
"And you have left them fatherless. Can't you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don't you remember, Adam, how it was, even a little?"
"I didn't do it," Adam said.
"Have you undone it? Your boys have no names. — John Steinbeck

You make me smile like the sun, fall out bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head. Spin like a record crazy on a sunday night. You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breath, shine like the sun buzz like a bee, just the thought of you can drive me wild. Oh you make me smile. -Uncle Kracker- — Uncle Kracker

She reshelved the sixpack and wrenched herself away to less compelling parts of the store, but it was hard to plan dinner when you felt like throwing up. She returned to the beer shelves like a bird repeating its song. The various beer cans had different decorations but all contained the identical weak low-end brew. It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without buying anything at all. But then where would she be? A weariness set in as she stood and vacillated: a premonition that none of the possible impending outcomes would bring enough relief or pleasure to justify her current heart-racing wretchedness. She saw, in other words, what it meant to have become a deeply unhappy person. — Jonathan Franzen

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee! — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A bird who hurt her wing,
now forgotten how to fly.
A song she used to sing,
but can't remember why.
A breath she caught and kept -
that left her in a sigh.
It hurts her so to love you,
but she won't say goodbye. — Lang Leav

Friendship among men is always part war, something learned from childhood. — Terry Kay

His dagger was out, poised at her throat. Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life. — George R R Martin

The music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You'll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling. — Andrew Bird

A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after. — Pete Seeger

I love the sound of the wind in the trees and the song of the birds and the shuffle in the leaves of my many woodland friends. — Jason Mraz

There's songs that could either be taken as a conversation between two people, like "The Privateers," or "Why," from a much earlier record. Or "Glass Figurine." That's my version of a relationship song. — Andrew Bird

The sound of the universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there is a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of the night dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters. Every morning around sunrise there is a tropical bird song competition, and it is always a ten way tie for the championship. When the sun comes out the butterflies get to work. The whole house is covered with vines; I feel like any day it will disappear into the foliage complete and I will disappear with it and become a jungle flower myself. The rent is less than what I use to pay in New York City for taxi fare every month. The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally a walled garden. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same. — Rosa Luxemburg

Now that I know that each star has its path, each bird is finally feathered and grown in the unbroken shell, each tree in the seed, each song in the life laid down - is the night sky any less strange; should my glance less follow the flight; should the pen shake less in my hand. — Judith Wright

The bird music sank into her, like a song you used to know but forgot long ago. You hear a piano play it some day, and for a minute you feel a happy pain, but you don't know why. Bird felt like that. — Katherine Catmull

I want no thunder or lightning to remind me of my God, nor am I as apt to bethink on most of all His goodness in trouble and tribulations as on a calm, solemn, quiet day in a forest, when His voice is heard in the creaking of a dead branch or in the song of a bird, as much in my ears at least as it is ever heard in uproar and gales. — James Fenimore Cooper

Their song reminds me of a child's neighborhood rallying cry - ee-ock-ee - with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, "tweet". I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting. — Annie Dillard

Life was not intended to be simply a round of work, no matter how interesting and important that work may be. A moment's pause to watch the glory of a sunrise or a sunset is soul-satisfying, while a bird's song will set the steps to music all day long. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that. — Andrew Bird

You're a freaking pschopath," I said, but he only chuckled.
"I don't expect you to understand, little bird," He turned toward me fully, fingering his blade and smiling. "I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song — Julie Kagawa

Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song? No wonder the bird has become the symbol for happiness. Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South. — Neltje Blanchan

The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of it's Song. — Emily Dickinson

The experience of playing music at a young age really opens up one's mind to different melody in life itself, literally - like, when you've even played a recorder, or whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hear the beauty in a bird's song, or the quiet tune in a gentle rustle of the wind. — Dave Smalley

The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum. — Andrew Bird

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song. — Rachel Carson

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.
I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.
And the wind says "What?" to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say "What?" to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel. — Charles Wright

And now above and beyond the birds' song, Andy hears a more distant singing, whether of voices or instruments, sounds or words, he cannot tell. It is at first faint, and then stronger, filling the sky and touching the ground, and the birds answer it. He understands presently that he is hearing the light; he is hearing the sun, which now has risen, though from the valley it is not yet visible. The light's music resounds and shines in the air and over the countryside, drawing everything into the infinite, sensed but mysterious pattern of its harmony. From every tree and leaf, grass blade, stone, bird, and beast, it is answered and again answers. The creatures sing back their names. But more than their names. They sing their being. The world sings. The sky sings back. It is one song, the song of the many members of one love, the whole song sung and to be sung, resounding, in each of its moments. And it is light. — Wendell Berry

I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers. — Clarice Lispector

When a child is born in a jail and during their life all they know is the jail they were born into, the idea of freedom becomes so terrifying that they ridicule the very thought of being free, as a clinical illness. It is nothing like the song that a caged bird sings. — Alejandro C. Estrada

If liberty sang a song, little,
as the larynx of a bird,
nowhere would there remain a tumbling wall. — Ahmad Shamlou

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

Like the baby bird that flies the nest too soon, because it can't comprehend anything better to do. Freedom is still freedom, even when it ends in a suicide song. — Anonymous

The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge. — Anthony De Mello

I'm coming from a place that's more experimental and indulgent already, so for the last 10 years, it's been more like, "How can I defend my own sensibilities by writing a nugget of a little catchy pop song?" That's how I'm stretching myself, by writing something really simple. — Andrew Bird

Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song. — Joseph Joubert

I sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems. — David Almond

There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive. — Andrew Bird

Animals of every kind live on the Other Side, .. you are not crazy if you feel the spirit of your cat rubbing against your legs, hear the sound of your dog's toenails clicking on the wood floor, or hear the familiar song your bird used to sing. Our pets do come back to visit us. — Sylvia Browne

Ede had been pregnant not quite the full term: eight months, two weeks, four days. She had lapsed into an extended silence - partly because she was still in mourning - still enraged and afraid of speech. And partly, too, because the child itself had taken up dreaming in her belly - dreaming and, Ede was certain, singing. Not singing songs a person knew, of course. Nothing Ede could recognize. But songs for certain. Music - with a tune to it. Evocative. A song about self. A song about place. As if a bird had sung it, sitting in a tree at the edge of a field. Or high in the air above a field. A hovering song. Of recognition. — Timothy Findley

There's a story ... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree ... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings ... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles. — Colleen McCullough

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt. — Alberto Moravia

The forest is peaceful, why aren't you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you. Hear the bird's song then let go. If you know nature, you'll know truth. If you know truth, you'll know nature. — Ajahn Chah

Music is a thing of the soul-a roselipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea-a strange bird singing the songs of another shore. — J.G. Holland

And hear the pleasant cockoo, loud and long - The simple bird that thinks two notes a song. — W.H. Davies

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? — Pablo Picasso

Whoever says that all music is prohibited, let him also claim that the songs of birds are prohibited. — Al-Ghazali

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. — Gretel Ehrlich

Good, good, now say cheese, say cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeese - the woman enthuses, and everyone says cheese. Myself, I don't really say, because I am busy trying to remember what cheese means exactly, and I cannot remember. Yesterday Mother of Bones told us the story of Dudu the bird who learned and sand a new song whose words she did not really know the meaning of and who was then caught, killed, and cooked for dinner because in the song she was actually begging people to kill and cook her. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses. — Arthur Symons

Who's to know what makes a bird wake up and decide to change its song? It was written that our world would change and it changed. — Eliot Pattison

Life is an extraordinary gift some people appear not to appreciate. In every breath and scent, every touch and sight we are gifted by new experience and the chance to feel the richness of experience. Every sound we hear, from the song of a bird to the harshness of an angry voice, is a miracle. — Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Winter has caused damage everywhere: meadow and forest are all grey, where before you heard many sounds. If I could see the girls play ball on the street, then bird song would come back. If only I could sleep through the winter! When I am awake I feel only hatred that his power is so far and wide. God knows, he even fights with May; I picked flowers where there is now snow. — Walther Von Der Vogelweide

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only! — Emily Dickinson

Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird's distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squeaking, others rapturous. — George Saunders

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends. — Shel Silverstein

If I'm going to be a caged bird, I'll sing the best song I can. — Wes Craven

My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air;
no bird here can sing as well
as the birds sing over there.

We have fields more full of flowers
and a starrier sky above,
we have woods more full of life
and a life more full of love.

Lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
my homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Such delights as my land offers
Are not found here nor elsewhere;
lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Don't allow me, God, to die
without getting back to where
I belong, without enjoying
the delights found only there,
without seeing all those palm-trees,
hearing thrush-songs fill the air. — Goncalves Dias

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle. — Andrew Bird

Courtesy, not control, that was His means. Just as He requested the stars to sing and they leapt into bright being, so request was to be their rule over bird and beast, seas and trees, mountains and moons and all the dancing distances between the heavenlies filled with the unending song of Creation. — Geoffrey Wood

The young must grow old
Whilst old ones grow older.
And cowards will shrink
As the bold grow bolder.
Courage may blossom in quiet hearts,
For who can tell where bravery starts?
Truth is a song, oft lying unsung,
Some mother bird protecting her young.
Those who lay down their lives for friends,
The echo rolls onward, it seldom ends.
Who never turned and ran, but stayed?
This is a warrior, born, not made.
Living in peace, aye many a season,
Calm in life and sound in reason,
Till evil arrives, a wicked horde
Driving the warrior to pick up his sword
The challenger rings then, straight and fair,
Justice is with us, beware, beware. — Brian Jacques

There's kind of this unequaled thrill of playing a half-finished song, it's kind of sense of slight embarrassment; like you're blushing. I like doing that. I did that with "Eyeoneye" and it was almost a curse on the song for a while; I debuted it when it was half-finished in a very public way — Andrew Bird

{In the shadows where the ancestors sleep, the bird's song is young, but all else is old. Stillness surrounds me and I breathe softly expecting the unexpected.} from book in progress — Nancy B. Brewer

Somewhere outside, a goldfinch was singing. Or maybe it was a song sparrow. My dad tried to teach me different kinds of bird songs, but I couldn't quite remember. — Jenny Han

To the birds you gave songs, the birds gave you songs in return. You gave me only a voice, yet asked for more, thus I sing. — Rabindranath Tagore

She was only half Bird now, and the other half song. She liked it that way. — Katherine Catmull

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

A heart is a bird which can only hear the song of kindness and love. — Debasish Mridha

Chimes?" Phyllis asked. "Chimes to call a lover? Chimes with the voice of a bird trapped in them? Chimes that play you whatever song you most desire to hear?"
"No thanks," said Nick. "We've got MTV. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I don't get particularly precious about things like this, though. Like the record company said, "We need a radio edit that delivers the hook" - I don't even know what they consider the hook in that song ["Oh No"] - "that delivers the hook sooner." So I'm like, "Okay. I see that." And they were all walking on eggshells, like is this going to be sacrilegious to me or something, to mess with this art I've created? And I'm like, "Great. I get to tinker with it, I get to mess with my song some more." — Andrew Bird

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. — Maya Angelou

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens ... — Johannes Kepler

I feel like tiny bird with a big song! — Jerry Van Amerongen

In nature everything is valuable, everything has its place. The rose, the daisy, the lark, the squirrel, each is different but beautiful. Each has its own expression. Each flower its' own fragrance. Each bird its' own song. So you too have your own unique melody. — Diane Dreher

There was once a merchant. An eager, industrious young man. His business ... required him to rise early and thus to bed early. But one evening ... he stayed awake past his usual hour ... and in so doing he heard the wondrous singing of something he'd never heard before: a nightbird. The next night, he managed to stay awake later ... to hear more of the bird's song. And the following night. He became so ... so intoxicated with the nightbird's voice that he thought only of it during the day. Came the time when he spent all the night listening to that song. Could not carry out his business during the sunlit hours. Soon he turned his back altogether on the day, and gave himself over to the nightbird's beautiful voice ... much to the sad end of his career, his health ... eventually his life. — Anonymous

All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson. — James Russell Lowell

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. — Khalil Gibran

Each of us thinks we are the most important person, because we are inside ourselves. Does this make sense? We see the world from our eyes and hear it with our ears. I look past the branches and leaves of the trees to the sky and I see the colors I call brown and green and blue. But think, Brian, are they the same colors that you see? We may call them by the same name, but they may look different to you. "The taste of an onion, the song of a bird, the strum of the harp, the grit of sand. I know what they feel like and taste like and sound like to me. But I can not know what they are to you. So how can I truly know your thoughts or feel your fears? "I can listen to you and comfort you, but only you can overcome your fears, only you can bring yourself into balance with ma'at. — Jerry Dubs

A bird doesn't sing because he has an answer-he sings because he has a song. — Joan Walsh Anglund

I don't expect you to understand, little bird. I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song. - Sarren — Julie Kagawa

Just Enough Soil for legs Axe for hands Flower for eyes Bird for ears Mushrooms for nose Smile for mouth Songs for lungs Sweat for skin Wind for mind. — Nanao Sakaki

The Reverie of Poor Susan
AT the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.
'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes! — William Wordsworth

You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants the friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high, he plants a home to heaven anigh.
For song and mother-croon of bird, in hushed and happy twilight heard -
The treble of heaven's harmony.
These things he plants who plants a tree. — Henry Cuyler Bunner

There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."
"You're awful."
"I'm honest. It's the world that's awful. Now fly away little bird, I'm sick of you peeping at me. — George R R Martin

Song I try to make the step-down call of the chickadee, but do it too insistently, over and over so it loses sense, the air going equally out and back, not slower in the opening, then quickening as the tight hinge retracts, but absolutely evenly, too even, the way one breathes and regulates breath for a doctor, to present the body's equanimity. There's a bird in a tree with a hinge in its throat, a door opening to let the sweet air pass from a high, thin place down a notch. There's phlox out there, opening between one black and another black, hanging branch of an apple tree - the very tree that holds the bird that bends the air so parenthetically around itself, and its song around anything listening. — Lia Purpura

Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it. — Karen Joy Fowler

There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension. — Andrew Bird

Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time. — J.K. Rowling

To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine - unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Before everything happened I wished i had double voice box like a song bird so I could sing two songs at once, the way a bird can harmonize with itself. I wanted to sing crystal clear notes. I wanted to sing them one after anther in ascending order. And at the same time I wanted to let another fountain of notes descend from my heart. — Karen Foxlee

If you dissect a bird / to diagram the tongue, / you'll cut the chord / articulating song. — Sylvia Plath