“In Washington they have their hawks and doves and in Ottawa we have our parrots.”

“I'm a hawk— but no kamikaze. And Jim's a dove— but he's not chicken.”

“The hawks favored an air strike to eliminate the Cuban missile bases. The doves opposed the air strike and favored a blockade.”

“AY, screen thy favourite dove, fair child,
Ay, screen it if you may,—
Yet I misdoubt thy trembling hand
Will scare the hawk away.”

“I have a deep-seated respect for parrots. As gifted as I am with all other wildlife, parrots have this uncanny desire to kill me. I'm not sure why, but they're like my kryptonite!”

“I have a parrot. It can say 'sovereignty to all the people' in Portuguese.”

“But lo! the girl, like a frightened dove, that caught in the vast shadow of a hawk falls trembling on some man, no matter who he be, so doth she fling herself into his arms driven by strong fear.”
Ecce autem pavidae virgo de more columbae quae super ingenti circumdata praepetis umbra in quemcumque tremens hominem cadit, haud secus illa acta timore gravi mediam se misit.

“We are not afraid of the owl, we are the hawks.”

“My lover and I, we meet in complete
privacy, in the southern valley forest.
Then I hear some parrot in the market
jabbering our secrets.”

“[Kenneth Patchen] has a real, but disorganized, self-indulgent, but rather commonplace talent.
This is not Mr. Patchen’s opinion of himself. (Nor is it that of William Carlos Williams, who almost invents a new language, a kind of system of emotional nonsense syllables, in his effort to praise Mr. Patchen properly. For instance, Mr. Patchen is “a hawk on the grave of John Donne.” I should have called him a parrot on the stones of half a cemetery.)”