“He bought a bird in its own cage, with a sheet over it so no one could see the bird and the bird couldn't see anyone, and the whole thing was a secret bird… Everything he said was tinged with the unreadability of someone who would bring a bird on cruise ship.”
Adverbs (2006), Often
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Daniel Handler 190
American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Sni… 1970Related quotes
“He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.”
Of Garrulity
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.”
Quoted in Barbara K. Rodes and Rice Odell, A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations (1992), p. 22
Source: The Oven Bird (1916)
Context: There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Act I, scene ii. Compare: "To public feasts, where meet a public rout,— Where they that are without would fain go in, And they that are within would fain go out", John Davies, Contention betwixt a Wife, etc.
The White Devil (1612)
