Quotes & Sayings About Pigeons

The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that the same neural mechanisms mediate the fear response in all sorts of animals, from pigeons and rats to cats and humans. The idea that other animals experience similar emotions to us is not anthropomorphism: it is based on sound scientific evidence. — Dylan Evans

The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon. — Rose Macaulay

I write a ridiculous number of drafts. The characters change and grow through the drafting, and my understanding of them deepens. Creating characters in a novel is like shooting at clay pigeons and missing, and then missing more productively as the narrative continues. — Robert Boswell

The time has come to put into practice the charity taught by the masters and priests of all times. The words said between the pigeons' cooing under the sacred porticos of all the temples should now turn into concrete reality. — Samael Aun Weor

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you, - we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started, - some of you, some of us, - but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers, - your Rifles, - as if encouraging us to shoot at you, - and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not - Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams. — Thomas Pynchon

Great as the differences are between the breeds of pigeons, I am fully convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct, namely, that all have descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia), including under this term several geographical races or sub-species, which differ from each other in the most trifling respects. — Charles Darwin

The English eat all sorts of birds - pigeons, ducks, sparrows - but if you tell them you eat puffin, you might as well come from Mars. — Bjork

I wait, washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig. Sometime in the eighties they invented pig balls, for pigs who were being fattened in pens. Pig balls were large colored balls; the pigs rolled them around with their snouts. The pig marketers said this improved their muscle tone; the pigs were curious, they liked having something to think about. I read about that in Introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who'd give themselves electric shocks for something to do. And the one on the pigeons trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first one got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked?
I wish I had a pig ball. — Margaret Atwood

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. — Carl Sandburg

A homing pigeon must love her home; otherwise she will not wish to return to it, — Meir Shalev

Harry - "No plovers no pigeons no snipe. No oysters mussels clams or whole lobsters. No artichokes no savories no cheese." He paused for breath then went on "Nothing too rich nothing too highly seasoned. And never more than one glass of wine. Did I miss any no-noes "
Emma - She sighed. "When it comes to my work I do wish you would be serious."
Harry - "I am serious " he assured her. "After reading this I understand why women have such tiny waists and go about fainting all the time. I thought it was corsets but no. You're all hungry . — Laura Lee Guhrke

You walk into a strip club with a wad of cash; they all flock around you. Strippers are just pigeons with tits. They go where the bread is. — Chris Hardwick

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof
out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross
surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers
'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking
your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn.
I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus.
O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever! — Allen Ginsberg

I am probably in the sky, flying with the fish, or maybe in the ocean, swimming with the pigeons. See, my world is different ... — Lil' Wayne

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
A Dog starv'd at his Master's Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus'd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear. — William Blake

These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air, while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying for joy. — Leo Tolstoy

I sat down and looked at the menu and thought how ironic it was that back then starving artists came to cafes like these because they lived on wine and street pigeons to survive, and now the same cafes are famous because of them and no starving artist can afford to eat there. It's hard to have an existential crisis when a glass of wine costs more than nine dollars. — Josefina Lopez

Venice appeared to me as in a recurring dream, a place once visited and now fixed in memory like images on a photographer's plates so that my return was akin to turning the leaves of a portfolio: a scene of the gondolas moored by the railway station; the Grand Canal in twilight; the Rialto bridge; the Piazza San Marco; the shimmering, rippling wonderland; the bustling water traffic; the fish market; the Lido beach and boardwalk; Teeny in the launch; the singing, gesturing gondoliers; the bourgeois tourists drinking coffee at Florian's; the importunate beggars; the drowned girl's ghost haunting the Bridge of Sighs; the pigeons, mosquitoes and fetor of decay. — Gary Inbinder

On July 29, six days after I had arrived in Paris, Fin and I moved into the new lodgings on the top floor of the hotel next door, where, beyond the pigeons who occupied the window ledge, you could see the turrets of Notre Dame. The concierge told us not to feed the birds, but we gave them our stale bread just the same, and so our flock became a feathered multitude, pushing and shoving one another behind the cracked glass. In the afternoons the light seemed to have feathers in it. — Rebecca Stott

The poems turned up everywhere. Soon the lady of the house went into fits of hysteria when she kept discovering this attack of poetry in the most unlikely places - under doors, in the mother-of-pearl latticework of windowpanes, under jars, stones, flowerpots, loaves of bread, and even delivered by homing pigeons, around whose rose-coloured claws the young matador lovingly wound poems in which he declaimed his love in the quaint language whose provenance was unknown to the world and still evoked images of the uninterrupted empires of Visigiths, the unbridled lust of the Huns and the intransigence of the Berbers. The young maiden recognized only a few words, but to her they were fragments of a secret music: zirimiri, fine rain; senaremaztac, husband and wife; nik behar diren guzian eginen ditut, I shall do everything necessary ... — Eric Gamalinda

I'd paint long strips of canvas and abandon them on the beach, or put bread out in geometric patterns for the pigeons downtown. I wanted people to find something nice and intriguing to puzzle over. Then I'd go back to see if the things were still there, or if anyone would notice. — Jenny Holzer

We are the pigeons of peace.
We are the peacocks of justice.
We are the symbols of kindness.
We fill the heart with happiness.
We love with joy to each other.
We will not forget it forever.
We are the future; we are the children.
We will make this world a peaceful garden. — Debasish Mridha

They are lovely pigeons to look at and their eyes are full of lessons to learn.."
They came back yesterday, they came back home," was the answer. "They came back limping on their feet with their toes turned in so far they nearly turned backward.
Every day the last six days I get a telegram, six telegrams from six pigeons
and at last they come home. — Carl Sandburg

Startled pigeons filled the old, shadowy rooms and crumbling hallways with their soft thunder. — Stephen King

You also yell at the pigeons outside, watch too many cooking shows, and have a blog entirely dedicated to pictures of yourself. — Marie Jacquelyn

We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. It's when we cherish them - cradle them to our breasts and feed them, day after day-that's when they curdle our souls. — Susan Fletcher

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - like a carrier pigeon. — George Eliot

You wouldn't walk with your underpants stuck in your bottom, you'd adjust them. So don't treat life like ill-fitting wondering underpants, adjust it to be comfortable again — E.E.D. Horton

You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don't see where they get the pigeons from, you don't really know how they're doing it. — Alan Alda

I don't eat animals. I rescue strays and take injured pigeons to the wildlife rehab. I carry spiders and wasps outside in a cup covered with a 3x5 card. It would only follow that I'd take pause when contemplating the abrupt and apparently brutal ending of a tiny human being's life, or even a potential human being's life. — Victoria Moran

in 2001, one Norwegian enthusiast even implemented Internet Protocol with a set of carrier pigeons. (Observers reported a disappointing 56 percent packet loss rate: rephrased in English, five out of the nine pigeons appeared to have wandered off, or have been eaten.) — Tung-Hui Hu

I look to the skies
and expect artificial passenger pigeons,
blackening the light,
people taking potshots for kicks
imagining one day they will be extinct. — Carl-John X. Veraja

Even as I begin to realize the magnitude of what I'm doing, a thought occurs to me. Somewhere in the city of rebirth, Paul is lifting himself out of bed, staring out his window, and waiting. There are pigeons cooing on rooftops, cathedral bells tolling from towers in the distance. We are sitting here, continents apart, the same way we always did: at the edges of our mattresses, together. On the ceilings where I am going there will be saints and gods and flights of angels. Everywhere I walk there will be reminders of all that time can't touch. My heart is a bird in a cage, ruffling its wings with the ache of expectation.
In Italy, the sun is rising. — Dustin Thomason

Over here you'll see San Fran is also host to a wide variety of exotic animals. Many find our streets to be like a modern rain forest," she says, indicating a flock of flea-ridden pigeons pecking leftovers off a bum sleeping on the curb. — Sarah Noffke

I only speak a little pigeon French. Just enough to get by with the little French pigeons. — Bob Hope

I went to the kiosk and bought ten bags of popcorn. I scattered nine on the ground for the pigeons, and sat on a bench to eat the last bag myself. Enough pigeons descended upon the popcorn for a remake of the October Revolution. — Haruki Murakami

Our language is the language of Shakespeare, Thompson and Milton, as we sit and croon like bilious pigeons. — George Bernard Shaw

Me? I was lost for long time. I didn't make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school [ ... ]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. [ ... ]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first. — Rabih Alameddine

I have weird aspirations. Like, I really want to kick a pigeon. — Hannibal Buress

Cecily peers at the murky grey liquid and frowns at a cube of meat that's floating against the rim. "What was this in a past life?" she asks.
"Pigeons and a field rabbit," Reed says. "Hunted them down myself."
"He's an excellent shot," Linden says.
"Can you eat pigeons, though?" Cecily falls back into her chair, looking a mix of disgusted and curious.
"You can eat just about anything," Reed says, dumping a ladleful into her bowl. — Lauren DeStefano

These pigeons seemed to have an inordinate amount of room on their legs. — Susan Elizabeth Curnow

Now that music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once they were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists keep the sacred and ineffable alive, they are under siege by coarse generations whose music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occurred during their mothers' pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges? — Mark Helprin

Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of our lives are; perhaps that is why we love it so. City of plagues and brief liaisons, city of lingering deaths and incendiary loves, city of chimeras, nightmares, pigeons, bells. You are the only city in the world whose dialect has a word for the shimmer of canal water reflected on the ceiling of a room. — Erica Jong

Hip, I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's
my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons. — Bret Easton Ellis

Here comes Monseiur Le Beau.
Rosalind: With his mouth full of news.
Celia: Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.
Rosalind: Then shall we be news-crammed.
Celia: All the better; we shall be the more marketable. — William Shakespeare

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion? ... There is nobody - here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. — Virginia Woolf

Writers are as jealous as pigeons. — Anton Chekhov

Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them? — Voltaire

Let's realize that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let's realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn us in return; or, — Dale Carnegie

One day you're the statue. One day you're the pigeon. — Diane Sawyer

You are what you choose to identify with. You have the choice. A mouse raised by pigeons. — Lil B

We had left the flea market - collecting Malena from a stall that sold live birds, where she'd purchased a box of pigeons which she had proceeded to suck dry in the car - — Seanan McGuire

She was the first to discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses; she painted on china; emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of pigeons, produced wonderful effects "as of an aerial orchestra" when they flew through the air. To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea pigs; but Lady Dorothy was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at luncheon in Charles Street. — Virginia Woolf

Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animals - never damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another being - the eagle would look down on a different world. The salmon would be crowding up the rivers, and passenger pigeons would darken the sky. Wolves, cranes, Nehalem, cougars, Lenape, old-growth forests would still be here, each fulfilling their sacred purpose. I would be speaking Potawatomi. We would see what Nanabozho saw. It does not bear too much imagining, for in that direction lies heartbreak. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

I'll sit in the park and feed the pigeons for a while.'
We don't have pigeons.'
Then I'll feed the pterodactyls. — Dean Koontz

I say human beings have purposeful brains beyond acting like flocks of scared pigeons. — Janny Wurts

Those pigeons couldn't take us out if they send their entire chirping flock. — Susan Ee

Pigeon-house does not lack food, it will not lack pigeons; and bear in — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

[Pigeons are] rats with wings. — Ken Livingstone

Offended you again," her godmother said with satisfaction. "Come along, then. We'll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it's utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows. — Eloisa James

I don't mind being a symbol but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings and I've seen what the pigeons do to them. — Tommy Douglas

When I ache to live, my mind loves to stay with the peaceful whiteness of a pigeon's care...in boundless amity.. — Munia Khan

Always be fearless. Walk like lion, talk like pigeons, live like elephants and love like an infant child. — Santosh Kalwar

I grumbled, completely convinced that Jarl was responsible for everything nasty, up to and including the flu, pigeons, and the relative inaccessibility of the G-spot. — Nicole Peeler

If pigs had wings, they would be pigeons. — W.C. Fields

No matter what you do if it isn't genuine it's not worth doing, if it isn't meant with good heart it's not worth saying, and if it's a darkness around you perhaps it's not worth remembering. — E.E.D. Horton

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas; And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares ... — William Shakespeare

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on. — Ray Bradbury

You will never see an eagle of distinction flying low with pigeons of mediocrity. — Onyi Anyado

The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves. — John Fowles

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life. — Nikola Tesla

After 1656 the Dutch, who had gained control over the Moluccas, chose the islands that could be most easily defended. They then burned all the nutmeg trees on the other islands to make sure no one else could profit from the trees. Anyone caught trying to smuggle nutmeg out of the Moluccas was put to death. The Dutch also dipped all their nutmegs in lime (a caustic substance) to stop the seed from sprouting and to prevent people from planting their own trees. Pigeons, however, defied these Dutch precautions. Birds could eat nutmeg fruits, fly to another island and leave the seeds behind in their droppings. — Meredith Sayles Hughes

worked in New York my whole life - actually lived only about twenty blocks away - and had never even heard of this place, or the Freedom Tunnel, for that matter. This city never failed to surprise. Hamster got out of the car, his big eyes blinking through the tangled gray mop of his hair as he looked around. We listened to the cooing of pigeons nesting in the crevices of the raised roadbed above as we waited. — James Patterson

Pigeons: They've got wings, but they walk a lot ... — Karl Pilkington

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. — James Thurber

Few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste
sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill
and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. — Henry David Thoreau

The behavior of the pigeon
is beyond reproach,
but the mountain cuckoo? — Yosa Buson

We've got stained glass windows in our house; it's those damned pigeons. — Chic Murray

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

As pigeons were making their descent from bird of the aristocracy to bird of poverty, the native American passenger pigeon was going extinct. The paved habitat that allowed pigeons to spread was replacing the forest habitat that had supported passenger pigeons. We traded a bird of the trees for a bird of the city. Feral — Nathanael Johnson

Whoever becomes the head of the National Theater finds himself in a position like that of Nelson's Column - pigeons dump on you because you're there. — Peter Hall

He was part of us and when he died all the actions stopped dead, and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. i've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million actions the night he passed on. — Ray Bradbury

I spent my day as I normally spend my days: threatening suppliers, bullying those who are not in line with my expectations, and generally creating havoc in the lives of others. The square across the street is empty of all but the pigeons. I find myself resenting them. — Courtney Milan

Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes
even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually
but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones; I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important. — Tom McCarthy

I already shred all my mail. What am I supposed to do now? Use pay phones? Smoke signals? Train pigeons? There's no such thing as privacy anymore. — Dennis Adams

Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They're everywhere and even if they don't get in your way, you can't help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them. — Maria Semple

There ought to be a home for children to come to, - and their children, - a central place, to which they could always bring their joys and sorrows, - an old familiar place for them to return to on Sundays and Christmases. An old home ought always to stand like a mother with open arms. It ought to be here waiting for the children to come to it, - like homing pigeons. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The cooing of pigeons, nesting in the wall outside; shimmering and unexpected like a first hyacinth gently tearing open its nutritious heart to release its flower of sound, mauve and satin-soft, letting into my still dark and shuttered bedroom as through an opened window the warmth, the brightness, the fatigue of a first fine day. — Marcel Proust

Human pigeons there the dancers
Gunfighters: metal-romancers
This war needs no necromancer
Iron shells its spell-commencer
Journalists, writers: freelancer
Donate words as 'peace enhancer'
Where's the question when war's the answer?
Mortality now life's financer!

From the poem- "For Them" By Munia Khan — Munia Khan

When I learned about this, I was told that it was "instinct." ("Instinct" continues to be the explanation of choice whenever animal behavior implies too much intelligence.) Instinct, though, wouldn't go very far in explaining how pigeons use human transportation routes to navigate. Pigeons follow highways and take particular exits, likely following many of the same landmarks as the humans driving below. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I just started playing around different clubs, and I got a good reputation around New York City of having good timing, a good right foot, and I was "funky", "soulful", and all that stuff. Then I ran into this group, the Pigeons. — Carmine Appice

As filthy as any night was, a New York City morning is always clean. The eyes get washed.
Flowers in white deli buckets are replenished. The population bathes, in marble mausoleums of Upper East Side showers, or in Greenwich Village tubs, or in the sink of a Chinatown one-bedroom crammed with fifteen people. Some bar opens and the first song on the jukebox is Johnny Thunders, while bums pick up cigarette butts to see what's left to smoke. The smell of espresso and hot croissants. The weather vane squeaks in the sun. Pigeons are reborn out of the mouths of blue windows. — Jardine Libaire

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

Don't be a pigeon if you were born to be an eagle. Experience God's altitude for your life. — Myles Munroe

In his devouring mind's eye he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. — Geoffrey Crayon

Across the street, there were parties at other windows. The sky was fading behind the roof peaks and chimney tops, which stood out like cardboard cutout silhouettes, and I looked from them to the lit windows, and back again. A flock of birds, pigeons probably, wheeled across the sky, heading home before dark. — Jo Walton

I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available. — Jenny Holzer

Rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes. This proposition is supported by much evidence from research on pigeons, rats, humans, and other animals. — Daniel Kahneman

If you love home - and even if you don't - there is nothing quite as cozy, as comfortable, as delightful, as that first week back. That week, even the things that would irritate you - the alarm waahing from some car at three in the morning; the pigeons who come to clutter and cluck on the windowsill behind your bed when you're trying to sleep in - seem instead reminders of your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it or how long you have left it. — Hanya Yanagihara

And the one on the pigeons, trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked? — Margaret Atwood