“She is like the wind, open and free. If I cage the wind, would it die?
-Then don't cage it, Mikhail. Trust it to stay beside you.”

“What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”

“I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage... I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art.”

“A life on the ocean wave!
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an eagle caged I pine
On this dull unchanging shore:
Oh give me the flashing brine,
The spray and the tempest's roar!”

“The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon.”

“Safety is a fence, and fences are for sheep. I would rather die at twenty-two, knowing the truth, then live in a cage of lies for a hundred years.”

“Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage”

“Life is like a bird. Whose purpose of life is only to keep flying in the open sky. Do not imprison him in the cage of your misery because he suffocates and he torments day and night in the cage. Release him to fly in the open sky because he has the courage to touch the heights of the sky. Imprisoned in a cage, he loses his confidence and forgets to fly.”

“And you can cage the songbird,
But you can't make her sing.
And you can trap the free bird,
But you'll have to clip her wings.
`Cause she'll soar like a hawk when she flies,
But she'll dive like an eagle when she dies.”

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!”