Cage Quotes & Sayings

The feelings trembled and flapped in his chest like a bird newly put in a cage. — Rumi

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another. — John Cage

Waiting for wisdom to open the cage, we forged in the fires of the innocent age. — Dan Fogelberg

No one can be healed of death. All they can do is tame it. Death is a wild animal, sharp-fanged. I am just trying to build a cage to keep it locked in. It is there, beside me, drooling as it waits to devour me. The bars of the cage that protect me are made of paper. — Antoine Leiris

Sure, you can choose the safety and predictability of the cage, forfeiting the adventure God has destined for you. But you won't be the only one missing out or losing out. When you lack the courage to chase the Wild Goose, the opportunity costs are staggering. Who might not hear about the love of God if you don't seize the opportunity to tell them? Who might be stuck in poverty, stuck in ignorance, stuck in pain if you're not there to help free them? Where might the advance of God's kingdom in the world stall out because you weren't there on the front lines? — Mark Batterson

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves ... — Eve Ensler

You can die of a broken heart
it's scientific fact
and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we're together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me. — Abby McDonald

But fear isn't a quiet pet that stays in a cage in the back room. Rather, as termites undermine the internal workings of a structure until it collapses from within, fear spreads to every part of your life unless you deal with it. — Amy Layne Litzelman

John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you've made your mark on history those who can't will be so grateful they'll turn it into a cage for you. — Lester Bangs

I drove through the suburbs, where all the houses looked identical, one variation of another of the same thing. I said to myself, I'd rather fire myself from a cannon, pick up the shit of elephants and eat it, suffocate inside Houdini's water tank, lie beneath the running horses, or sodomise a big cat in a cage and pay the consequences than get trapped in these suburbs of cardboard, gossip, and conformity. — Rawi Hage

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet. — Virginia Woolf

I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is, how do we arm the other 11? — Nicolas Cage

I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

When I escape from my cage of conformity, I grow wings to fly in search of truth and beauty. — Debasish Mridha

Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage. — Brien Piechos

I keep telling the screws over and over again, 'If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.' The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy's eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy's or man's eyes. — Stephen Richards

True love does not put a person in a cage like a bird. It gives true freedom to soar. — Debasish Mridha

I'm not afraid to play ugly - look at 'Adaptation.' I looked like a turd that a cat had coughed up. — Nicolas Cage

I needed another basis for musical structure. This I found in sound's duration parameter, sound's only parameter which is present even when no sound is intended. — John Cage

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance. — Nicolas Cage

In all his trials he was sustained and at times even exalted by a secret strength in himself. The soul aids the body and at moments uplifts it. It is the only bird that can endure a cage. — Victor Hugo

I've gotten pretty good at leaving characters on the set. I go home and try to relax and regroup and be ready for the next day. — Nicolas Cage

I think that the best characters are the ones who both manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time. — Nicolas Cage

A bouquet yellow like remorse
Hurts my view
The cage
The wheel
The vile ennui of all mankind
And no one no one to break my chains!
("Outcries") — Helene Baronne D'Oettingen

I say, did you hear me?" The old man shook a worn walking stick at the oak. "I said move it and I meant it! I was sitting on that rock" -he pointed to a boulder- "enjoying the rising sun on my old bones when you had the nerve to cast a shadow over it and chill me! Move this instant. I say!" The tree did not respond. It also did not move. "I won't take any more of your insolence!" The old man began to beat on the tree with his stick. "Move or I'll - I'll -" "Someone shut that looney in a cage!" Fewmaster Toede shouted, galloping back from the front of the caravan. "Get your hands off me!" the old man shreiked at the draconians who ran up and accosted him. He beat on them feebly with his staff until they took it away from him. "Arrest the tree!" he insisted. "Obstructing sunlight! That's the charge! — Margaret Weis

Two more [birds added to her cage]. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!? - - - Miss Flite to Esther. [I thought a the last two a bit strange until I looked and saw the old definitions of gammon (as being double talk or obfuscation) and spinach (as being a spurious and unwanted growth). How appropriately summarized the situation! — Charles Dickens

This life will be a cage for you. — Leah Raeder

I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character. — Nicolas Cage

You mean to tell me that I discovered a talent of your beloved swords that even you guys didn't know about?" I pull as hard as I can on the cage bars. "You seem to bring out new and unimagined dimensions from both me and Kooky Bear." "Pooky Bear. — Susan Ee

Work is not a drag for me. I like to get here early, hang out, catch up with the boys. I'll go in the cage and hit, do my exercises. I try to keep it fun and find ways to enjoy it. — Carlos Delgado

Leif gripped Benny's shoulders to hold him back, but he broke free and chased the truck, pumping his tiny arms and legs with great furry.
"I love you!" he called out, when he was just ten feet away. I gripped the metal bars, my throat choked with emotion.
"I love you!" Silas cried, as he followed.
They both kept after us, sprinting wildly behind the cage. I watched their mouths moving, saying those words over and again, as the truck bounded through the woods and their small bodies disappeared, unreachable, behind the trees. — Anna Carey

If I do do a sequel, I'm going to have to know for sure that the script is better than the original. So I'm going to be very careful about that because I'm not eager to repeat myself. — Nicolas Cage

Forgive my brother," Camira apologized. "We don't normally let him out of his cage when guests are present. — Brandon Mull

Idris Elba is a grand actor. He's very larger than life; he's bigger than life. — Nicolas Cage

I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie) — Tennessee Williams

I don't like it when people on the street say "smile" or "cheer up." It's a real cheap line. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling real grateful for everything. It's a solid time in my life. When people say I look sad, they're wrong. — Nicolas Cage

When I looked up at my father as a boy, I thought being a man was having control. Being the master and commander of your own destiny. How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends. I — Pierce Brown

Don't you see, Ren? That's exactly why I have to go. You need to know that you can survive without me. That's there's more to life than just me. You need to see this world that's opened up to you and know that you have choices. I refuse to be your cage- Kelsey, pg. 401 — Colleen Houck

I think a bird is the worst present you can give somebody because it's guilt-ridden. This animal has the gift of flight, and you put it in a cage and watch it not do that until it dies. — Kyle Dunnigan

What lies inside a cage of flames? The truth, the heart, but burned up before you can see it. Only traces remain in the ashes, a pattern you guess at or invent, an intangible thing that might leave a mark, but could just as easily blow away. — Rene Steinke

Always we try to put the wild in a cage. — John Fowles

I want to always find new ways of reinventing myself. — Nicolas Cage

The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it. — Axel Munthe

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation. — John Cage

I could see the outline of the cage coming into sight.

"It's so beautiful out today," she commented.

"It is." I started to sweat.

"Do you need a hand?" She could see the trap breaking the water.

"No, I'm good," I said, clearing my throat.

"Oh, that stinks. It's empty."

"Oh well. No loss." Maybe I didn't have to do this now. Maybe she wouldn't see the box, and I could just pull up the traps I had set earlier today. She didn't have to know.

"Wait. What's that?"

Okay, never mind. Back to plan A.

"What's what?" That was smooth. — Kiera Cass

Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent. — John Cage

Fifty years ago people believed, accurately, that they were entitled to seek the blue bird, whereas today they believe, mistakenly, that they're entitled to find it and take it home, in a complimentary cage with a month's supply of birdseed ... Those who think they've a right to catch whatever they are free to chase, are doomed to disappointment. That's our generation in a nutshell. — George Jonas

I would rather be a free animal then a cage animal — Beto Jimenez

Nobody can make a movie as exciting as Jerry Bruckheimer. When it's a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that it's going to have lots of chrome and gloss, it's going to be sexy, and it's going to be big and fun. — Nicolas Cage

when you run from truth , lie create a artificial beautiful cage around you and you start live like prisoner who just think i am free but its also lie. — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

Sting told me if I love somebody I should set them free.
I doubt Sting ever loved anyone with wings. If he did he might rethink such a stupid sentiment.
I suppose the point is to wait for your love to come back to you voluntarily.
I wonder if there's a difference between setting something free and letting it go?
I probably did it wrong.
I should stop taking advice from my radio.
I worry that you're lost.
I keep a heart-shaped cage unlocked for you, out on the street where it can easily be seen.
So if one day you return at least you'll have a place to stay. — Erin Morgenstern

Human Millipede 6 was the highest-grossing movie of the summer and returned Nicholas Cage to Oscar-winning status. — C.Z. Hazard

I am a prisoner of my skin. My bones are my cage. — Dawn Kurtagich

I think I'll give the Cage of Death a miss too," I said. Crocodiles were fascinating creatures, like living dinosaurs, but they could do their living over there somewhere, far away from me. — Renee Conoulty

I know I have to give her that freedom. Otherwise I've just caged her, haven't I? And what kind of love would it be, that only came from inside a box? — Jane Lovering

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. — Nicholas Kaufmann

Nothing endures for so long as fear. Everywhere in nature one sees evidence of innate releasing mechanisms literally millions of years old, which have lain dormant through thousands of generations but retained their power undiminished. The field rat's inherited image of the hawk's silhouette is the classic example - even a paper silhouette drawn across a cage sends it rushing frantically for cover. And how else can you explain the universal but completely groundless loathing of the spider, only one species of which has ever been known to sting? Or hatred of snakes and reptiles? Simply because we all carry within us a submerged memory of the time when the giant spiders were lethal, and when the reptiles were the planet's dominant life form. — J.G. Ballard

He was watching me, and he chuckled.
"Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me.
"No," I said.
"You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere."
"Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked.
"Are you calling me a man?" he said. — Delilah S. Dawson

Pierce took a step back to put more space between us. "I demanded too much," he said, his sadness at himself, not me. "I see in your heart you found someone who makes you strong who does not hold too tight, who has learned that the pain of losing you to fate is more than the pain of you dying in a cage. Who is he? — Kim Harrison

Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is. — John Cage

If someone says can't, that shows you what to do. — John Cage

Love is the cage and the cage is closed and the door is locked and nobody's home. — Ashraf Siddiqui

Her eyes met his in the mirror. "When I take her down, she's going to pay for this." Eve tapped fingers lightly over her jaw. "And she won't look so fucking pretty when I toss her in a cage."
"Girl fight? Can I watch?"
"Pervert." She stepped away, into the shower, and ordered the jets on full at a blistering temperature. — J.D. Robb

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I'm in my fifthies, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance. — Nicolas Cage

That was when I saw it: behind the beauty and fake innocence was something else, something cold and calculating. Even when she smiled, I could see sin so deeply ingrained in her that no cardigan could hide it. [ ... ] To anyone else, she was pure and naive, but this girl was hiding something. I knew only because the same sin had dwelled in me my entire life. The difference was she held it deep within her, and I let mine out of cage on a regular basis. — Jamie McGuire

What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before. — John Cage

Imprisoned in a cage of sound, even the trivial seems profound — John Betjeman

The heartless king has found his heart after all. It rests beneath my rib cage. — Laura Thalassa

On this evening, Mme. Padva wears a dress of black silk, hand embroidered with intricate patterns of cherry blossoms, something like a kimono reincarnated as a gown. Her silver hair is piled atop her head and held in place with a small jeweled black cage. A choker of perfectly cut scarlet rubies circles her neck, putting forth a vague impression of her throat having been slit. The overall effect is slightly morbid and incredibly elegant. — Erin Morgenstern

When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. — Yukio Mishima

Dogs' bond with humans is bred into their very cells, their genes; it's written through their entire history, a chronicle that can be read in their eyes. But inside this black wire cage, in the lolling eyes of what remained of a Pekingese, there was nothing legible at all. One could hardly grieve for the dog, because the dog was already gone. To euthanize it - which a BAWA vet mercifully did, moments later, with the customary dose of anesthesia - was merely to acknowledge its departure. — Bill Wasik

It means leaving behind your physical body. Leaving the cage of your physical flesh, breaking free of the chains, and letting pure logic soar. Giving a natural life to logic. That's the core of free thought. — Haruki Murakami

Outside the cage, in the bullshit society we've created for ourselves, the truth is sometimes hard to see. But inside the octagon, with a crowd screaming for blood, and the smell of sweat and fear in the air, the truth is facing you, as clear as day. If you're the fastest, the quickest, the smartest, and you don't lose your cool, you'll survive. You'll be the victor. — Ozlo Grey

I barely leave my cage, my house. — Kim Coates

I do enjoy animated movies. — Nicolas Cage

Since when are you so nice?" I whispered.
Cage's nostrils flared slightly. "Only once, since the day I met you, Teacup, that I haven't treated you right. Am I right? — Madeline Sheehan

Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men. — Frank Harris

We are a breed of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage! — John Galsworthy

I worship the ground Eva walks on. I love her smile. I love the way she gets in a snit and her lips get all pinched up. I love the way she thinks she has to cook for me. I love the fact that she lets me butter her biscuit. I love the way she curls into me at night and lets me hold her. I also love how perfect it is when I'm making love to her. How I feel complete. — Abbi Glines

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat — George Bernard Shaw

In this job it's like beasts of prey in a cage — Marcelo Rios

He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything. — Paolo Giordano

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at Absolute Beauty. — Peter Shaffer

I'm trying to keep you safe."
Safe as a porcelain bowl wrapped in cotton linen and boxed up. It would be a lie to say she didn't want to feel safe, or that Nolan's worry didn't leave her feeling warm and even a bit precious. But it also left her feeling trapped, like an ornamental bird kept in a cage, its wings clipped. — Page Morgan

The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical. — John Cage

Any place could be a cage. And maybe, with the right person, any place could be a home. — Theresa Romain

My father was always getting excited about something. It's genetically inside me somewhere. — Nicolas Cage

Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage. — Lewis Hyde

Sometimes I do love to rehearse, but I always switch it up depending on whom I'm working with. — Nicolas Cage

If I went in the cage, I was going to end up eaten alive. That was actually one of my top five ways not to die ... — Laurell K. Hamilton

There are no secrets.It's just we thought that they said dead. When they said bread. — John Cage

IT IS IMPORTANT, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient bravery. For when Sister Cage of the Sweet Mercy Convent steps onto the battlefield courage is often found to be in short supply. She — Mark Lawrence

I hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling nervous and stupid, for this was a situation I had not experienced before, and my training did not seem to be quite equal to it. Also, I suddenly thought of the parrot in a cage and that was distracting. — Barbara Pym

Abso-Fuckin-Lutely! — Dee Ellis

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself ... A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us. — John Steinbeck

I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day - spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free. ( ... ) I want, I think, to be omniscient ... I think I would like to call myself "The girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be - perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I - I am powerful - but to what extent? I am I. — Sylvia Plath

Suddenly, the shadow disappeared through the wall!
Maybe the shadow disappeared again.Can we please go back home now?I really don't like it here & I'm scared! Julia pleaded.
The shadow was standing by a very small cage, pointing its long, thin finger towards the floor. — Magda M. Olchawska