Quotes & Sayings About Flapping

Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I'm wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck. — Rick Riordan

And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My mama steps out of her dress
and drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.
She stands alone: bathed, blooming,
burdened with nothing of this world.
Her body is naked and beautiful,
her wings gray and scorched,
her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.
I watch her departure, her flapping wings:
She doesn't look back, not even once,
not even to whisper my name — Brenda Sutton Rose

Before such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is more distinctly felt - like a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny air. — George Eliot

Wherever you are, dear butterfly, keep flapping your chaotic wings. Flap them. Flap them like your little life depends upon it... or at least my little death. — Qwen Salsbury

If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe. — Charlie Huston

Faith is jumping off a cliff, knowing you're going to have to fly. Once you're falling from a cliff, flapping your arms like a madman isn't really faith, I suppose, it's just the logical consequence of faith. It's where the devil waits to tempt us, it's the forty days and nights spent in the desert. It's that experience we all must have in our time on earth of what life would be without God. We all have to be tested. — James Rozoff

Some hangovers are so horrific that it seems the whole world rocks and sways around you, the very walls creaking with the motion. Others are relatively mild and it just turns out that in your drunkenness a collection of Vikings have thrown you onto a heap of coiled ropes in their longship and set to sea.
"Oh, you bastards." I cracked open an eye to see a broad sail flapping overhead and gulls wheeling far above me beneath a mackerel sky. — Mark Lawrence

You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people - . . . They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan. . . . — Monica Wood

But to me, butterflies were slightly sneaky; all they were were moths in
embroidered jackets. And, yes, moths were creepy and their flapping wings made a nasty, papery
sound--but at least they were honest — Marian Keyes

Clearing his throat, he rumbled, "Miss Darling, a word if you please."
"Sesquipedalian," she said, keeping her back towards him.
The strange response momentarily stunned him. "Pardon?"
Turning around, she leaned against the counter and grinned at him, "You asked for a word and I gave you one. It means 'many syllabled' and while it's exceedingly pretentious it is a lot of fun to say. Sesquipedalian; it tangles up the tongue and then just falls right off.
"Or perhaps you would prefer a different word?" she continued guilelessly and he was completely charmed by her. "Tittle, which is the little dot over i's and j's; or Ornithopter, an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings; Tuatha De Danan Lora or Expector Patronum?"
"Now you're just making words up," he grinned, and realized he had missed talking to her. — A.C. Warneke

Flower petals in the breeze look like a butterfly flapping its wings. My love for you takes flight like a white orchid blushing pink. — Jarod Kintz

She'd pulled back her hair to air her neck, just for one second, fanning her flushed cheeks by flapping her other hand. She'd smiled at him and pulled a face at how hot and stuffy the bar was. Miles had thought she was beautiful, the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and if you'd told him, in that minute, that he'd be in this beautiful creature's bed tonight, or that in seven years' time he'd be waiting for her at the top of the aisle, he could never have believed you. — Erin Lawless

Across the rectory's east lawn, through a blizzard of flying leaves, something long and thin was flapping in the wind. A ragged figure in a white nightgown hanging lifelessly from the trees. — Cash Peters

Elephants love reunions. They recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy. There's bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine. — Jennifer Richard Jacobson

Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the spotlights of street lamps. It was the kind of night when you might expect to see a skeleton flying through the air, its ragged black shroud flapping in the wind. — Dan Chaon

Uncle Yuichi: Something's moving up there? Hmm... I don't see anything. It was probably a satelite.

Punpun (with gums flapping): Could I have discovered a new planet?!

(long pause)

Yuichi: Yes! This could be a great discovery! If it really is a new planet... It'll be called Planet PunPun!

Punpun (slobbering again): Do you think I'll win the Nobel Prise?!

Yuichi: You sure are a greedy kid. — Inio Asano

I worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on! continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. Fred thompson and one or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the chappie behind the bar, was listening with his ears flapping. But there's no reticence about Bingo. He always reminds me of the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice. — P.G. Wodehouse

I'm sorry."
"Don't worry, dear," the woman said brightly. "The day I encounter Sophia again, I'll grab the nearest heavy object and bludgeon her myself."
Arriane flung out a hand to help Luce up, pulling her so hard her feet shot off the ground. "Dee's an old friend. And a first-class party animal, might I add. Got the metabolism of a donkey. She almost brought the Crusades to a grinding halt the night she seduced Saladin."
"Oh, nonsense!" Dee said, flapping a hand dismissively.
"She's the best storyteller, too," Annabelle added. "Or she was before she dropped off the face of the earth. Where've you been hiding, woman?"
The woman drew a deep breath and her golden eyes dampened. "Actually, I fell in love."
"Oh, Dee!" Annabelle crooned, clasping the woman's hand. "How wonderful."
"Otto Z. Otto." The woman sniffed. "May he rest ... "
"Dr. Otto," Daniel said, stepping out of the doorway. "You knew Dr. Otto?"
"Backwards and forwards. — Lauren Kate

In the human society, it is difficult to find all angels flapping there wings and all saints singing halleluya. — Late Chief Gani Fahewinmi

And to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. — Thomas Hardy

But I saw the pair of them, along with everyone else. Hard to miss. Him towering like a raggedy scarecrow in that flapping black scholar's gown, and the sword always quiet next to him, sweet as honey, and poison with it. — Ellen Kushner

Sure enough the goldfish was swimming upside down, its boggle eyes wide and staring, its fins flapping madly at its sides. Brandon felt like the fish looked. He was anxious over how Lewis
knew he was a vet and the address of the practice he worked at.
"I don't think it has vertigo, Lewis." A professional approach was all he could think of. "Has it ever done this before?"
"He. He's not an 'it' and his name is Fluffles. I'd appreciate it if you referred to Fluffles by his name rather than a generic term demeaning him into nothing more than an object devoid of gender." Lewis cocked his head, staring unblinking. "Fluffles is a beloved pet. I demand you show him respect!"
"Ooookaaaay." Brandon pressed his lips together and released them with a loud pop. "Has Fluffles ever done this before?"
"Don't know." Lewis peered into the bag. "I've only had him forty-five minutes. — Zathyn Priest

Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know
Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy. — Christopher Paul Curtis

Today at the Melchor market, a fantastical sight. A servant girl with a birdcage on her back, full of birds. She wore her blue shawl wrapped around the cage and tied in front to hold it. The willow cage must have been very light because she was not bent over, yet it towered over her head, with turrets like a Japanese pagoda. And full of birds: green and yellow, flapping about like dreams trying to escape from a skull. — Barbara Kingsolver

Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. — D.H. Lawrence

m a butterfly!" screamed the fat man as he ran, flapping his arms like two really flabby, really rubbish wings. "You're actually not," Valkyrie Cain told him for the eighth time. He ran around her in a big circle, bathed in moonlight, and she just stood there with her head down. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and moments earlier she'd had to drag her eyes away from his wobbling bosoms before they made her feel queasy. Now that his trousers were starting their inexorable slide downwards, she was averting her gaze altogether. "Please," she said, "pull up your trousers. — Derek Landy

Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream. — Banana Yoshimoto

Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.4 — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Once down by the shore, only Temeraire went directly into the deep water and began to swim. Maximus came tentatively into the shallows, but went no further than he could stand, and Lily stood on the shore watching, nosing at the water but not going in. Levitas, as was his habit, first wavered on the shore, and then dashed out all at once, splashing and flapping wildly with his eyes tightly shut until he got out to the deeper water and began to paddle enthusiastically. — Naomi Novik

Rena?" I looked up as a figure emerged from the white void of snowfall. The snow dusted his broad shoulders as he took long, measured strides toward me, his black coat flapping in the wind.
As he neared, I made out his startled features. "Wallace?"
His gaze burned with indiscernible emotion. "Are you hugging the lamp post? — Carrie Butler

Tohr jacked forward his in his seat. "What the hell!"
As Lassiter's big body cut through the projection onto the screen, a gigantic pair of flapping breasts covered his face and chest. "Adventures in the Milfy Way. A true classic."
"It's porn!"
"Duh
"
"Okay, I am not sitting through this with you"
The angel, still standing up. shrugged. "Just wanted to make sure you know what you're missing. — J.R. Ward

Morning
SUN
That awakens Paris
The highest poplar on the bank
On The Eiffel Tower
A tricolored cock
Sings to the flapping of his wings
and several feathers fall
As it resumes its course
The Seine looks between the bridges
For her old route
And the Obelisk
That has forgotten the Egyptian words
Has not blossomed this year
SUN — Vicente Huidobro

Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was. — Peter S. Beagle

How do you know this?
Because I'm always watching people. When I watch people I too look through them. I learned that from my mother. To glance is not enough; eyes and brains together, acting like a flock of ravenous birds, flapping, tearing, poking ... I know everything about people when I look at them for only a moment. I can tell from their clothes, their walks, their hair and hands, I know all the bad things that they've done. I know how they've failed and how they will fail and how miserable they are. — Dave Eggers

If you see me with my face all black, don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like a bat's, as big as the whole sky, don't be frightened. If you hear me raging ten times worse than Mrs. Bill, the blacksmith's wife - even if you see me looking in at people's windows like Mrs. Eve Dropper, the gardener's wife - you must believe that I am doing my work. Nay, diamond, if I change into a serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for my hand will never change in yours if you keep a good hold. If you keep a hold, you will know who I am all the time, even when you look at me and can't see me the least like the North Wind. I may look something very awful. Do you understand? — George MacDonald

The creature laughed, scornfully. "I," it said, "am frightened of nothing." "Nothing?" "Nothing," it said. Charlie said, "Are you extremely frightened of nothing?" "Absolutely terrified of it," admitted the Dragon. "You know," said Charlie, "I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?" "No," said the Dragon, uncomfortably, "I most definitely would not." There was a flapping of wings like sails, and Charlie was alone on the beach. "That," he said, "was much too easy." He kept on walking. — Neil Gaiman

I walked across the snowy plain of the Tiergarten - a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there; the Brandenburger Tor, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky; and on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station, like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you. — Christopher Isherwood

The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of a village idiot who was explaining that he didn't know anything about anything. — Kurt Vonnegut

When Dick was killed last week he looked like that, Flapping along the fire-step like a fish, After the blazing crump had knocked him flat ... . How many dead? As many as ever you wish. Don't count 'em; they're too many. Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny? — Siegfried Sassoon

Such
times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded
in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames. — Roger Zelazny

But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind. — Mary Oliver

Yet Percy, even in the glimpses he had had in the streets, as he drove from the volor station outside the People's Gate, of the old peasant dresses, the blue and red-fringed wine carts, the cabbage-strewn gutters, the wet clothes flapping on strings, the mules and horses
strange though these were, he had found them a refreshment. It had seemed to remind him that man was human, and not divine as the rest of the world proclaimed
human, and therefore careless and individualistic; human, and therefore occupied with interests other than those of speed, cleanliness, and precision. — Robert Hugh Benson

Shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather — Charles Dickens

At that moment, Bobbie Faye felt an unbridled hatred for every movie heroine who'd ever raced away from he villain in Jimmy Choo shoes, looking perfectly coiffed and ready for an afternoon tea. That was just wrong. When the pain finally got to her, she tossed pride way the hell away and pressed her free arm across her chest to hold her boobs a little steadier. Unfortunately, that shortened her reach and she was unable to block briars and limbs and vines at face-level. Unwilling to admit defeat, Bobbie Faye held her forearm across her breasts while twisting her wrist so that her hand flapped in front of her to help with deflecting the underbrush, all while holding her hair with the other hand. She hadn't quite perfected the coordination of running to flapping when Trevor glanced over his shoulder. As he turned away, she distinctly heard something that sounded a little too much like 'spastic, hobbled penguin. — Toni McGee Causey

An hour later and a faint movement caught my eye. Mum was weakly flapping her hand, beckoning me to her. I had no idea how long she had been trying to attract my attention. As I bent over to catch her last words she whispered, 'turn that bloody music off — Laura Marney

She could hear again the ripple of water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making her eyes burn. — Kate Chopin

If you ain't flap before you ain't flap before. — PewDiePie

I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you? — Margaret Atwood

I drove to Liberty Park, just south of downtown, and within minutes, Henry had his kite out and was urging LeBron James into the air.
"He's done this before," I said in surprise.
"Not in forever. I can't remember the last time, actually," Millie replied. "Is he doing it?"
"Listen," I said. "Can you hear it?" I listened with her, straining for a sound that would connect her to the visual. Then the kite dipped, caught the wind again, and lifted, making a soft, wop wop in the air, like laundry on a clothes line, flapping in the breeze.
"I hear it!"
"That's Henry's kite. He's a natural."
"Will you help me get mine in the air? I could take off running, but that might be dangerous. I don't want to run head first into the pond. There is a pond, isn't there?"
"Just run away from the sound of the ducks. — Amy Harmon

When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor. — Richard Matheson

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling ... stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness. And — Terry Pratchett

We're all turkeys! Some of us are running around with our heads cut off, some of us are flapping our wings that hard we're close to flying. But nothing is an eagle bar God ... — Phil Collins

I thought nothing at all, but I felt an immense sadness, as when two parts of one's past existence, which have been anchored near to one, and upon which one has perhaps been basing idly from day to day an unacknowledged hope, remove themselves finally, with a joyous flapping of pennants, for unknown destinations, like a pair of ships. As — Marcel Proust

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping. — Walt Whitman

The artificial intelligence approach may not be altogether the right one to make to the problem of designing automatic assembly devices. Animals and machines are constructed from entirely different materials and on quite different principles. When engineers have tried to draw inspiration from a study of the way animals work they have usually been misled; the history of early attempts to construct flying machines with flapping wings illustrates this very clearly. — Maurice Wilkes

In a matter of seconds, the sky darkened and the first fat drops of rain splashed around us. We went from table to table to gather our guests, smiling to mask our nervousness as the wind blew harder. As I watched the empty chairs overturning and the linens on the grape arbor flapping like sails, I was seized with a sudden fear. The wind whipped the trees; the creak of branches presaged the first sharp flash of lightning, followed by a thunder crack that set my heart pounding. — Rosie Genova

Birds fly overhead--well, not the birds I know [...], but brightly colored animals about the same size. Instead of feathered, flapping wings, these things have two sets of stiff, buzzing membranes. The membranes move so fast they are a blur.

Blurds--that's what I will call these creatures. — Scott Sigler

There is a phrase "neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring." This thing was all of them, plus some other bits of beasts unknown to science or nightmare or even kebab. There was certainly some red, and a lot of flapping, and Nutt was sure he caught a glimpse of an enormous sandal ... — Terry Pratchett

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,
to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,
nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,
and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived. — Henry David Thoreau

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn't a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can't, I won't, because to save her once isn't to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn't silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can't hear you. — Peter Orner

We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. — Angela Carter

We all ended up somewhere with our various uncertain lives flapping about us in tatters and our pockets full of foreign coins. — Karen Elizabeth Gordon

When I'd looked back up at the window, the white curtain flapping in the gusty breeze, I'd felt both sadness and relief, the oppositional tug of heaviness and lightness, one lifting me up, one pushing me down. I understood then, Lulu and I had started something, something I'd always wanted, but also something I was scared of getting. Something ai wanted more of. And, also, something I wanted to get away from. The truth and its opposite. — Gayle Forman

It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter. — Mark Twain

All that changing of plates and flapping of napkins while you wait 40 minutes for your food. — Hugh Casson

Lexy had images of running through the neighborhood in the dark, her ripped pajamas flapping behind her and frantically chasing her dog while neighbors peered through their windows at the crazy lady. — Leighann Dobbs

I thought, there is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment ... There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl's hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else. — Rob Sheffield

A glimpse, a little piece of their story, flapping like ribbon in the wind. — Karen Foxlee

Death's got an Invisibility Cloak?" Harry interrupted again.
"So he can sneak up on people," said Ron. "Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking ... — J.K. Rowling

It was bizarre. Not at all like the soft and gentle flapping of butterflies' wings people spoke of- no, no, no. More like pterodactyls swooping and clipping her heart with every pass. Actually, maybe bizarre was the wrong word. Terrifying was more like it. — Victoria Parker

My arms sometimes move on their own in big flapping motions, as if I might take off, and my hands spin like a hummingbird's wings. — Ned Hayes

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. — E.L. Konigsburg

There are so many things that can go wrong while performing. I've had violin strings break; I've had pants that were slowly falling down, and I'd have to pull them up in between every song; my hairpiece was falling out, so a big chunk of hair was just flapping around as I danced, and I've completely fallen on my butt. — Lindsey Stirling

Fractal litigation, whereby the flapping of a butterfly's wings on one side of the world resulted in a massive compensation claim on the other. — Steve Aylett

Sometimes I get so lost in the moment, I start running around my yard, flapping my arms like a seagull at the beach. A lot of times I'll even start to squawk. Usually right around the third or fourth squawk is when my neighbor starts screaming at me to pipe down. He's always like, "Quiet down, lady! And put on some pants!" And I'm always like, "YOU put on some pants, sir!" because in the heat of the moment I panic and I can't think of anything better to say. Of course, he's already wearing pants, so it doesn't pack quite the punch I want it to, but the bottom line is he's clearly not as connected to nature as I am. — Ellen DeGeneres

How fickle it is, memory - preferring some days to others, granting first a blue sky, offering next the sound of laughter, swelling our remembrances until a largeness seeps into the grain of things and memory itself becomes billowed and flapping. — Sonja Livingston

Salem"

In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips
to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes
until the knitting sailor stabs at ships
nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's
asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft
lashes the oily slick about your head,
beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft
dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,--
There sewage sickens the rebellious seas.
Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman
Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks.
Where was it that New England bred the men
who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks
and fought the British Lion to his knees? — Robert Lowell

He clears his throat. 'Do you want to go to a movie or something?' The wings stop flapping. 'I can't. I'm sort of under house arrest.'
'Till when?'
'Till pigs fly and hell freezes over.'
'Soon, then.'
'Any minute. — Laura Ruby

Follow your heart and what it's saying,
after you die, an when you live.

What he/ she lives is what she/he is giving to you .
Enjoy it and you'll be happy.
Love isn't a game ,love is a portrait, of a beautiful butterfly flapping it's wings to the horizon. — Avis

That's the spirit! Forward momentum."
Mayhew snorted. "Your forward momentum is going to lead all your followers over a cliff someday." He paused, beginning to grin. "On the way down, you'll convince 'em all they can fly." He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. "Lead on, my lord. I'm flapping as hard as I can. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great sword point upwards, the red raiment of his office flapping around him like the red wings of an archangel. And the King saw, he knew not how, something new and overwhelming. The great green trees and the great red robes swung together in the wind. The preposterous masquerade, born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature, and he himself, with his rationality, and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident - a blot of black upon a world of crimson and gold. — G.K. Chesterton

Her heart became a bird, trapped inside the glass box of her chest, flapping violently into wall after invisible wall, crumpling into a heap of broken hollow-bones on the transparent floor. — K.I. Hope

After this, I couldn't hear their voices any longer; for in my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic. Perhaps it was my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wondered what might happen if she should die; I did wonder about it, in the same way I wondered what might happen if our house were swallowed up in an earthquake. There could hardly be life after such an event. — Arthur Golden

A speck of ire can
blaze a fire; the fate of war can
be sealed with a dart,
a butterfly flapping its wings
may turn the tide miles apart! — Somali K Chakrabarti

The humans were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of soldiers, pointing at things and learning more Chimaera words: salt, rat, eat, which unfortunate combination led to Zuzana rejecting the meat on her plate.
"I think it's chicken," Mik said, taking a bite.
"I'm just saying there were a lot more rats around here earlier."
"Circumstantial evidence." Mik took another bite and said, in passable Chimaera and to guffaws of laughter, "Salty delicious rat."
"It's chicken," insisted one of the Shadows That Live. Karou wasn't sure which it was, but she was flapping her arms like wings, and even producing chicken bones to prove it. — Laini Taylor

He waited a second, then made an abrupt flapping motion with his hands. "Well?" he demanded. "I'm a vampire, you silly woman. Ask me in! We're wanted felons, you know! — Rachel Caine

It is a distortion, with something profoundly disloyal about it, to picture the human being as a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing watching and patching, always on the verge of flapping to pieces. — Lewis Thomas

A flapping tongue puts out the light of wisdom."~Polly Shine — Jonathan Odell

Charlotte, dressed in a very short-skirted policewoman's outfit, was leading a dancing brigade, jumping around at the front of the room, her long red hair flapping up and down like a matador's cape. She was head girl, and she would shows us how to party if she had to.
I wasn't really sure why Charlotte had decided to come to the party as a stripper. I found myself at a loss for words as she complimented us on our costumes.
"You're a..." I tried to find the right thing to say. "Really...hot cop?"
"I'm Amy Pond," she said. "From Doctor Who. This is her kissogram outfit. — Maureen Johnson

If the bees which seek the liquid oozing from the head of a lust-intoxicated elephant are driven away by the flapping of his ears, then the elephant has lost only the ornament of his head. The bees are quite happy in the lotus filled lake. — Chanakya

His subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat — Donna Tartt

My bare foot sounded like a sad trout flapping against the marble floor. — Kevin Hearne

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free. — Lauren DeStefano

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate ... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. — Henry David Thoreau

An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression. — H.L. Mencken

Back the, my life was mostly pieces-tire swings and lemonade, dogwood petals drifting down and going brown in the grass. Cotton dresses, bedsheets flapping on the line. An acre of front porch. A year of hopscotch rhymes. — Brenna Yovanoff

Hoverboarding looks so fun, like being a bird. But actually doing it is hard work."
Shay shrugged. "Being a bird's probably hard work too. Flapping your wings all day, you know? — Scott Westerfeld

If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut; but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do. — Donna Tartt

At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy's fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view. He heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike. — Bernard Malamud