“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 216)

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 4, §3 (pp. 90–91)
Context: One of the historians of Darranda said: To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.
A yielding, an obedience, a willingness to accept these notes as the right notes, this pattern as the true pattern, is the essential gesture of performance, translation, and understanding. The gesture need not be permanent, a lasting posture of the mind or heart, yet it is not false. It is more than the suspension of disbelief needed to watch a play, yet less than the conversion. It is a position, a posture in the dance.

Source: One Crazy Summer

Source: Without Feathers

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Mekubolim, 1906. Alle Verk, vi. 53.
Context: There are melodies that must have words... and melodies that sing themselves without words. The latter are of a higher grade. But these, too, depend on a voice and lips,... hence are not yet altogether pure, not yet genuine spirit. Genuine melody sings itself without a voice. It sings inside, within the heart, in man's very entrails!

Listening to a long solo on Mingus at Montery, as quoted in Mingus/Mingus : Two Memoirs (1989) by Janet Coleman and Al Young, p. 10

Source: Tears of the Moon