Plover Quotes & Sayings

He was seeing the full extent of her failure - in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. — Ayn Rand

In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too. — Aldo Leopold

He claimed he had read the book so many times that the words had fallen out of it and the pages were all blank so he had to read the book to put the words back in or the book would be forlorn and naked. — Brian Doyle

Plover's words were like dried flowers, stiff and crumbling, crushed flat between pages, when we'd had the living, blooming blossoms all around — Lev Grossman

Awkward passion is so often so very much more admirable than mere achievement. — Brian Doyle

People would tell you much more than you expected to if you were generically presentable and left silence next to them like a friendly stranger; it was like they were waiting for some friendly silence so they could fill it with words; and words were useful, words were hints and intimations, words were fingers pointed in certain directions, if you listened carefully.. — Brian Doyle

It's always the compliments from people you love that mean so much. — Maria Bamford

There are some silences that are so huge, and fraught, and haunted, and weighed, and shocked, that they just are; there's nothing you can say about them that makes any sense. All you can do is witness them, and feel some deep ache that such things arrive, and must be endured, with wordless aching all around. — Brian Doyle

I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear. — Cindy Sherman

Hope was a luxury Melora could barely allow. It was more painful than sorrow, more hurtful than disappointment because it represented a potential: the potential for happiness. If only her happiness didn't depend so much on other people, she'd be fine. — Marie Zhuikov

Sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having — Richard Paul Evans

Well the sky always seemed like another ocean to me, you know? Like we live between two incredible oceans, and we'll never get to the bottom of either of them. — Brian Doyle

I always had a sketchbook with me when I was young. I was hiding behind it, basically, hiding behind drawing because I couldn't cope with people in real life; I was very shy and very nervous around people. — Robert Crumb

Before Summer Rain


Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid — Rainer Maria Rilke

The wide-ranging birds that visit islands of the ocean in migration may also have a good deal to do with the distribution of plants, and perhaps even of some insects and minute land shells. From a ball of mud taken from a bird's plumage, Charles Darwin raised 82 separate plants, belonging to 5 distinct species! Many plant seeds have hooks or prickles, ideal for attachment to feathers. Such birds as the Pacific golden plover, which annually flies from the mainland of Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands and even beyond, probably figure in many riddles of plant distribution. — Rachel Carson

The waitress serving the wedding party was a short young blonde. She took their orders efficiently and delivered everyone's food correctly. "If
only she knew my story," Melora mused. then she thought again, "Better yet,
maybe she's in the middle of her own story." Who knew what things might have
happened already on the island to this typical college-age waitress. — Marie Zhuikov

I was the solitary plover
a pencil
for a wing-bone
From the secret notes
I must tilt
upon the pressure
execute and adjust
In us sea-air rhythm
We live by the urgent wave
of the verse — Lorine Niedecker

Don't know what to do in a world without mud and moss, brother. — Brian Doyle

Even on the first day we invaded Plover's house we sensed the conundrum that Americans are faced with in England: they're too frightened of English people to behave rudely to them, and too ignorant to know how to behave politely. — Lev Grossman

If we were walking here together, I'd point out the carnivorous plants that grow on this spot: sundews with sticky red leaves, eating insects to sustain them because the soil is so poor. If you were with me, I'd take you to the Doubler Stones, where thousands of years ago, Neolithic peoples carved channels in the rock to drain away the blood from their sacrifices. I would show you where the plover nests, and the green hairstreak butterfly lays its eggs. I love this place. I love this land. It's part of me, it's part of who I am. But it's no place for you: a seven-year-old girl in a princess costume. — Sanjida Kay

But he was wise enough even at twenty to see that what many would call an utter and admirable freedom was also a sort of thicket or wilderness, in which, by virtue of being able to take any path he chose, he was lost in a dense jungle of the possible, the sheer welter of which sometimes overwhelmed him. The irony was, he thought, that as soon as you chose a path, you mourned and regretted the ones that you did not choose; but to choose none was to moon uselessly over them all, and thus be imprisoned by impasse. How very many people, he thought as he walked through the catchbirdtrees by the lake, were frozen by the weight of their potential, the imposing alps of their dreams? — Brian Doyle

It has come to my belated attention, due to a loop that I only recently managed to break, that, although you are undoubtedly human, and fragile, I am still fond of you. I've tried to fight it. I've asked the doctor if I can be cured or operated on, but it seems there is no cure, lobotomy, or programming solution to my dilemma but one. I need to keep you. — Eve Langlais

We are the rocks and reefs of the human sea, tumultuous outcrops, magnets for wrecks. The peaks of mountains you cannot see: that's us, all right. Dark even on the brightest day. Stony and defiant of the prevailing currents until we are eventually worn down and dissolved. Sometimes soaked and sometimes dry as a bone. Hammered by tides and grimly standing our ground against the pounding. Probably even secretly enjoying the pounding. — Brian Doyle

If everything must be burned I will do the burning and so I will not be burnt but be the fire. Everything I ever loved burned and so I will be the burning. There is nothing but that must which be burnt. Women will burn and children burn and houses burn so I will be nothing that can burn. I will be the fire. The fire has no home. The fire goes where it wants. The fire arrives and departs and none can account the meaning of its travels. Everything I ever touched burned. — Brian Doyle

I love mixing and matching patterns, styles old and new, feminine and masculine and drawing inspiration from characters like Annie Hall. — Sydney Wayser

But as some muskets so contrive it
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at dock or plover
Bear wide, and kick their owners over. — John Trumbull

Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by. — Alfred Lord Tennyson