“A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting —
Her baby hangs on underneath.”

—  Randall Jarrell

"A bat is born," lines 1-31; reprinted as "Bats" in The Lost World (1965)
The Bat-Poet (1964)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A bat is born Naked and blind and pale. His mother makes a pocket of her tail And catches him. He clings to her long…" by Randall Jarrell?
Randall Jarrell photo
Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

Related quotes

Barbara Kingsolver photo

“A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist
Donald J. Trump photo

“Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother's womb in the ninth month. It is wrong, it has to change.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in "Trump just basically said he's anti-childbirth" http://mashable.com/2018/01/19/trump-march-for-life-childbirth/#NXYV1ubFzSqW (19 January 2018), by Rachel Kraus, Mashable
2010s, 2018, January

“She talks about how Brahms baby sat them while her mother, Clara, was out earning a living, concertizing all over Europe. Brahms continued in their lives until his death. She also talks about her loving relationship with her mother; her usual sibling like relationships with the other Schumann children; and how she would get mad at Brahms when he would make her mother sad, even cry, but none of them could be mad at Brahms for very long.”

Harry Markowitz (1927) American economist

On Eugene Schumann http://www.amazon.com/review/R280VQKJ4LC7OI

Kunti photo

“In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The God of Small Things, p. 233.

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”

Sarah Strohmeyer (1950) American writer

Source: Kindred Spirits

“The male is just a bundle of conditioned reflexes, is incapable of a mentally free response, is tied to his early conditioning, is determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the male that he is not part of his mother, that he is him and she is her.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 5.

Jodi Picoult photo

“What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

William Faulkner photo

“She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? … Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. … and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)

Anne Brontë photo

“If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Mrs. Markham to Helen

Julia Quinn photo

“If you want to know if a gentleman loves you,” her mother said, “there is only one true way to be sure.”
“It’s in his kiss,” her mother whispered. “It’s all there, in his kiss.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: It's in His Kiss

Related topics