Vultures Quotes

“Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno Park. The performance was brilliant. The soloist's technique was outstanding, the music both delicate and deep, and the pianist's heated emotions were there for all to feel. Still, even with my eyes closed, the music didn't sweep me away. A thin curtain stood between myself and pianist, and no matter how much I might try, I couldn't get to the other side. When I told Shimamoto this after the concert, she agreed."But what was wrong with the performance?" she asked. "I thought it was wonderful.""Don't you remember?" I said. "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!"Shimamoto laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call that art appreciation.""This has nothing to do with art. Let a bald vulture eat that up, for all I care. I don't care what anybody says; I like that scratch!""Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But what's this about a bald vulture? Regular vultures I know about--they eat corpses. But bald vultures?"In the train on the way home, I explained the difference in great detail.The difference in where they are born, their call, their mating periods. "The bald vulture lives by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They're completely different.""You're a strange one!" She laughed. And there in the train seat, ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.”

“Vultures pick the meat clean off a bone. Guilt eats at the marrow, leaving a man hollow.”

“Blood is everywhere..Vultures take shelter beneath the tanks”

“Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.”

“Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.”

“…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.”

“Awoke to find three vultures sitting on the fence. Realizing they were a portent of impending death I shot them.”

“Predator and prey move in silent gestures, on the seductive dance of death, in the shadows cast by the vultures of the night. ☥”

“My head was a desolate place and as barren as the bare hills of Le Marche. Until I began to build in it, only vultures nested there.”

“But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.”