Birdsong Quotes

“Because the birdsong might be pretty,But it's not for you they sing,And if you think my winter is too cold,You don't deserve my spring.”

“There is an arch supported by four vast columns. Etched over hundreds and hundreds of yards of stone, furlongs of stone, there are names: "Who are these, these? The men who died in this battle?""No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in the cemeteries.""These are just the ... the unfound." When she could speak again. From the whole war?"The man shook his head. "Just these fields."Elizabeth sat on the steps. "No one told me. My God no one told me,”

“Currents of desire and excitement that she had not known or thought about for years now flooded in her. She wanted him to bring alive what she had buried, and to demean, destroy, her fabricated self.”

“All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so... tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me... I saw that those simple things might be true... I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.”

“He didn’t ask himself if she was beautiful, because the physical effect of her presence made the question insignificant.”

“I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.”

“Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong – the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to?”

“Morning birdsong filled the room. For all his high opinion of birds, privileged among God's creatures, still, deep in his heart, the Emperor did not trust them, just as he did not trust artists.”

“The limitless, lowering sky, the long stretches of motionless empty prairie, the silence, complete right down to the absence of birdsong -- who knows what decides a man to leave most of his words unspoken?”