Starlings Quotes

“What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible present and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods, Hollins pond, and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers’ barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not?”

“Eagles commonly fly alone. They are crows, daws, and starlings that flock together.”

“My anxiety house a house and a fence and a deer in the yard. A zip code. A plague of starlings.”

“On the single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity, grackles and starlings neatly punctuated an invisible sentence.”

“Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through,Though I am damned for it we two will lieAnd burn, here where the starlings fly”

“I go to the Natural History Museum and look at the cage of stuffed starlings there. But my favourite thing is the big blue whale. The scale of it is unbelievable, and makes you feel how insignificant you are as a human being.”

“You can FEEL the wave of emotion online when something is about to go viral, good or bad. A scientist I met once mathematically compared internet behavior to swarm behavior seen in starlings or locusts.”

“Human material culture - the buildings and roads and works that would strike any human as an obvious sign of intelligence - had for years seemed like part of an elaborate mating ritual to the starlings, useless and flamboyant as the peacock's tail.”

“I searched for my own heartand long after I had lost my wayin the days trailing past with their foliagein the aloof sky blue with distanceI thought I'd find my heartwhere I'd kept your eyes two brown butterfliesand I saw the swallows swoopand shadows starlings”