Quotes & Sayings About River Song

There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the River Dee; He worked and sang, from morn to night; No lark so blithe as he. And this the burden of his song, Forever used to be, I care for nobody, not I, If no one cares for me. — Isaac Bickerstaffe

Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance. It is always there, a river of sound. — Alice Hoffman

Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Citizen is Rankine's Spoon River Anthology, an epic as large and frightening and beautiful as the country and various emotional states that produced it. — Hilton Als

La luna hung beautifully bright over the horizon, in a sky still dark. Cold breezes blew over the river and ruffled the tall grasses along the bank, making them rustle and chatter. In their waving fronds I sensed small animals stirring. The pure song of a nightingale, a rossinhol, rang across the water, ending in a trill. It was an hour for sprites and fairies. What magic might lurk among the riverbank grasses? Anything was possible just before dawn. — Julie Berry

If it's time to go, remember what you're leaving. Remember the best. — Steven Moffat

There Is A Place.

There is a place, I want to show you.
There is a place, just down the road.
There is a place, down by the river.
There is a place, that I call home...
There is a place, that I would play as a kid.
There is a place, that I would walk alone.
There is a place, and it's like a sad song.
There is a place, that is now long gone...
Here is a place, will you come see?
This is the place in my mind, I'd like to be.
Just open your mind, and think.
Is there a place, you would like to be? — Jerrel C. Thomas

Ah, drink again This river that is the taker-away of pain, And the giver-back of beauty! In these cool waves What can be lost?
Only the sorry cost Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself! The level flood that laves The hot brow And the stiff shoulder Is at our temples now. Gone is the fever, But not into the river; Melted the frozen pride, But the tranquil tide Runs never the warmer for this, Never the colder. Immerse the dream. Drench the kiss. Dip the song in the stream. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Robin didn't like that idea very much-Jules spending time with Adam? "I get jealousy too, you know. You used to be in love with him."

Jules turned his head to look at him. "That was before I knew what love really was". He smiled. "When I met you, Robin, God.... I had to redefine everything. You know, there was this country song my mother really liked. It used to annoy me, I was in my technopop phase, but lately I just... I find myself thinking about the lyrics all the time. That was a river, this is the ocean.... I thought I loved Adam, and I did, but... it wasn't even close to this incredible ocean that I feel for you". — Suzanne Brockmann

The Doctor: Dr. Song, you've got that face on again.

River: What face?

The Doctor: The 'he's hot when he's clever' face.

River: This is my normal face.

The Doctor: Yes, it is. — Steven Moffat

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180 Departed, have left no addresses. — T. S. Eliot

Love can flow like the river, fly with the bird, sing with the crickets at night. It is in the energy of the river, the flight of the bird, the song from the cricket. There is nowhere where love is not. — Janet G. Nestor

Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul. — Jerry Garcia

River Song: Right then. I have questions, but number one is this - what in the name of sanity have you got on your head?
The Doctor: It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool. — Steven Moffat

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song. — Michael Jackson

Wow, Fitz breathed, and Sophie hoped he meant the river trick
but it was hard to tell with the way he was staring at Linh. — Shannon Messenger

River gonna take me, Sing me sweet and sleepy,
Sing me sweet and sleepy all the way back home,
It's a far gone lullaby sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I first left home — Robert Hunter

Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Seasons may change winter to spring, but I love you until the end of time
Come what may, come what may, I will love you until my dying day
Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace
Suddenly my life doesn't seem such a waste, it all revolves around you.
And there's no mountain too high no river too wide
Sing out this song and I'll be there by your side
Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide
But I love you until the end of time — Ewan McGregor

Asshole, I will pepperspray your ass, BACK OFF."

The first think I think is Cora!, even though it doesn't sound like Cora. Then my brain makes the leap to ... Amber!, who is always hovering at the top of my list of fierce ladies. This is succeeded, rather dazedly by Xena?, Buffy?, River Song?, Agent Scully?, Proffessor McGonagall?, President Laura Roslin of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol?, Mad Wife In The Attic From Jane Austen Not Eyre No Wait Damn It Eyre Not Austen? — Hannah Johnson

I like to interpret 'Call me a River', as if I'm saying, 'Now you're telling me you love me after all that, and I'm telling you to shove off.' That's my interpretation. But I would never 'say' that because somebody else might interpret the song in another way. — Diana Krall

The Doctor: Doctor Song, you've got that face on again.
River: What face?
The Doctor: The "He's hot when he's clever" face.
River: This is my normal face.
The Doctor: Yes it is.
River: Oh, shut up.
The Doctor: Not a chance. — Steven Moffat

If I die young, bury me in satin.
Lay me down on a bed of roses.
Sink me in the river at dawn.
Send me away with the words of a love song. — The Band Perry

River Song? Amy Pond? Hardly weak women. It's the exact opposite. You could accuse me of having a fetish for powerful, sexy women who like cheating people. That would be fair. — Steven Moffat

I've always listened to music while I write, but none of my work has been so directly impacted by a song as my new novel, 'So Cold the River,' for which the brilliant strings piece 'Short Trip Home,' composed by Edgar Meyer and featuring the incredible Joshua Bell on violin, inspired much of the story. — Michael Koryta

Sometimes things change irrevocably. You turn a corner, hear a new song, read a book, fall in or out of love, or look at a painting in a different light.
Or you get shot several times.
Then no matter how you try, you can't unsee or unexperience something to make life what it used to be. The river always flowed downstream. — Thea Harrison

We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. — Mark Twain

With a jolt, Lance realized Melissa was pretty. No, not the type that would make him stop in the middle of his morning runs on Iloilo River Esplanade, his gray running shoes scraping against the pavement as he skid to a halt. He realized Melissa was pretty the same way he sometimes caught himself singing along to a song he didn't even like on the radio. The knowledge sneaked up on him. — Clarisse David

And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection. — Hermann Hesse

The job of singing is to stay open to the river of soul in all its manifestations, the dark and the light, without letting your ego get in the way. I never want to be bigger than the song. I just want you to receive it. — Jennifer Warnes

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

. . . This
is not the same river at my fingertips.
There are no paths, no sunken roads
familiar in the forest, by which we can
retrace our steps,
by which we can escape
by which we can reclaim and return,
or hear the child's song running in the timothy . . . — John Daniel Thieme

River that must turn full after I stop dying
Song, my song, raise grief to music
Light as my loves' thought, the few sick
So sick of wrangling: thus weeping,
Sounds of light, stay in her keeping
And my son's face - this much for honor. — Louis Zukofsky

God gave music the power to carry his light into the darkness. That's a mighty privilege. It means intentionally telling stories and writing songs that bear truth that outlasts the songs themselves. If I did this in hopes of thunderous applause and piles of cash, I would have quit years ago. But there are moments on the stage when I sense something magical, a connection with the band and the audience, when our stories intersect and suddenly we're wading in an ancient river. Suddenly the song is secondary to the greater story being told through each of us. — Andrew Peterson

The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal ... Siddhartha was now listening intently ... to this song of a thousand voices ... then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - Perfection ... From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. — Hermann Hesse

Song of myself
Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset
earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth
rich apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes. — Walt Whitman

Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know?' River Song, A Good Man Goes to War — Cavan Scott

Several hundred men filled the main chamber. Women's voices could be heard from beyond the cloth screens running down the eastern wall. The gathering quieted for the service, which followed the same pattern as in Judea: a song and then a Scripture reading from the Torah scrolls, followed by a prayer from the Psalms. Some men departed to begin their day, but most remained. Jacob stayed where he was, repeating silently the Psalms that resonated with the emotions filling his heart. How precious, O God, is your constant love. You let us drink from the river of your goodness. You are the source of all life. — Davis Bunn

When I heard 'Moon River', at first I thought it was just a nice song, but then I started paying attention to the words and realized this song was about Huck Finn. I just love the words, that it's kind of you and me against the world, and we're going to make it together. — Drew Holcomb

This song is dedicated to Frank Zappa, and River Phoenix, Fred Gwynne who played Herman Munster, Dixie Lee Ray, Thomas P, Tip O'Neil, and you, dumb ass, who just threw water on me. — Kurt Cobain

JAMIE'S SONG 'August and November':

They say it was a beautiful summer.
I say I felt so cold the whole short while.
I heard that it rained for days,
Between August and November.
Well I didn't see it rain on the enslaved river.

I am the river no more (x2)
And the rain is just acid water from their cloudy black smoke.

And now I'm at a standstill on the streets,
That are lit up like a funfair from some forgotten dream.
Yet faces, headlights, and the whole world passes by me.
Without taking a step, I'm down in the hole too.
And if it rains this coming
Dark and lonely December,
I will never watch it fall on the entrapped river.

I am the river no more (x2)
And the rain is acid water from their cloudy black smoke. — Neha Yazmin

Marathon

2. Song of the River

Once we were happy, we had no memories.
For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.
We were always walking parallel to a river
with no sense of progression
though the trees across from us
were sometimes birch, sometimes cypress-
the sky was blue, a matrix of blue glass.

While, in the river, things were going by-
a few leaves, a child's boat painted red and white,
its sail stained by the water-

As they passed, on the surface we could see ourselves;
we seemed to drift
apart and together, as the river
linked us forever, though up ahead
were other couples, choosing souvenirs. — Louise Gluck

You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color. — Neil Gaiman

Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let Serpent-Breath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. — Bernard Cornwell

A good river is nature's life work in song. — Mark Helprin

I would get songs sung to me, like 'Old Man River, 'or kids would call me Mississippi and things like that. At the time, I wished I had a name that blended in more with my surroundings. Now, though, I've really learned to love it. From fifteen, I really liked it. It felt appropriate. Before that, I don't think it quite fitted me. I had to grow into it . — River Phoenix

When it seems like the night will last forever,
And there's nothing left to do but count the years,
When the strings of my harp to sever,
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears ...
I will walk alone by the black muddy river,
And dream me a dream of my own,
I will walk alone by the black muddy river,
And sing me a song of my own. — Robert Hunter

JAMIE'S SONG 'Bright Blue Dream':

I watch the world go round and round.
And see the sun go up and down.
I think I've heard most every sound
Except your voice.

I feel the river by my feet.
And let the tears dry indiscrete.
Seems the horizon's incomplete
Without your face.

The world is a colder place,
Shadows everywhere you used to be.
Darker than the darkest nights I've seen.

And I try go back to that
Bright blue dream.
When there was nothing, there was nothing, but you and me.
Clear blue sky.
Yes there was something, there was something, I could not see. — Neha Yazmin

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket ... Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace. — Sherman Alexie

She sits on the iron throne
She is one and three
The dark lady
the redgold lady
The blank lady
oracle
of blood, she who must be
obeyed
forever
Her glass wings are gone
She floats down the river
singing her last song — Margaret Atwood

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. — Jerome K. Jerome

As they drifted down the Apple River, Virgil felt as though a medicine was moving through him, flushing his cells with a natural liquid peace. The quiet shrilly of katydids and the soft song of moving water permeated the air. He watched Chantel slowly spinning in the currents, her eyelids fluttering in a way he'd never seen before, her ebony face drenched in sunshine, feet kicking lazily in the water. He wanted to think only of her, in this calm river vision, releasing all other thoughts from his head like flocks and flocks of birds, every species known to man, shooting out of a cavern and filling the sky. — Ron Parsons

"The River" [song] is also, yes, very metaphorical. Rivers are cleansing. As long as human beings have been on the Earth we've used rivers to cleanse ourselves. And, for me, the lyrics "something in the river," I think is - well, the river is a metaphor for where I was at the time. — Ladyhawke

When you're a god, your emotions are contagious - other people can catch them. When people stood near Spider on a day that he was this happy, their worlds would seem a little brighter. If he hummed a song, other people around him would start humming, in key, like something from a musical. Of course, if he yawned, a hundred people nearby would yawn, and when he was miserable it spread like a damp river-mist, making the world even gloomier for everyone caught up in it. It wasn't anything he did; it was something that he was. — Neil Gaiman

Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea ... — Edward Abbey

It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there. Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song. — Stephen Vincent Benet

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

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

That's the great thing about being in a band: it's a gang for people who are too wimpy to fight. You can create a gang and have an identity and fight for something and stand up for something just by making pop songs. They're my gang members and gang members are for life, and if you try and leave, we execute you. That's the way it goes. A simple bang, back of the head, into the river, and we keep moving on. — Torquil Campbell

Rush like a river from the highest mountain, drink from the fountain and stop your counting. What kind of wine does he have in his tavern, oh so enchanted and sing like a mad man. Mad with the love of a wife for her husband, child or mother, sister or brother ... sing for the Most High, sing for no other. We are all notes in this eternal song, God plays his flute and we all dance along. — Trevor Hall

I always knew I'd be a sailor. In my cradle, playing with my toes, I knew it. What else could there have been? The sailors had made my blood move before I was born, I now believe. As my mother stood one night upon the shit-smelling Bermondsey shore with me in her belly, the sailors had sung out there across the great river, and their siren song had come to the shell-pink enormity that was my listening ear newly formed in the amniotic fluid.
Or so I believe. — Carol Birch

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.
(from, "What Can I Say") — Mary Oliver

Three Songs 1 Mountain. I whip my quick horse and don't dismount and look back in wonder. The sky is three feet away. 2 Mountain. The sea collapses and the river boils. Innumerable horses race insanely into the peak of battle. 3 Mountain. Peaks pierce the green sky, unblunted. The sky would fall but for the columns of mountains. — Mao Zedong

Heaven above was blue, and earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air. — Charles Dickens

I do believe we should push each other to write better songs and make better music. We do ourselves a disservice if we sit back and float along the river instead of trying to paddle and guide ourselves to a more creative place. — Bonnie Baker

O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93. — Billy Joel

The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse. — Aldo Leopold

The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Hey, she's a piratey soul
Full a' vinagar and glitter
She is a song of her own
From down the wrong end of the river
Wild, like the lily-a-passion
Have you ever had the honors
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no
Hey, when your carnival rose
Sows the kiss of belladonna
There aint no takin' it slow
For the avalanches' daughter — Grant-Lee Phillips

Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river. — Markus Zusak

The problem was that the only reality he could see what a nut-brown nymph who could whisper like a song and move like a river of honey. — Frank Lee

The part of River Song, the Doctor's companion in his eleventh incarnation, was originally offered to Kate Winslet. She turned it down and the part went to Alex Kingston. — Andy Bell