A Quote by Anna Kavan
While I am watching the birds I believe I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.
Related Quotes
I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.
I am slowly, painfully discovering that my refuge is not found in my mother, my grandmother, of even the birds of Bear River. My refuge exists in my capacity to love. If I can learn to love death then I can begin to find refuge in change.
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the star shine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
The birds never needed passports... We always thought, the birds can go wherever they want, and we couldn't, really. The birds were very much the symbol of... free movement for me.
I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits. To the birds, the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. The birds say sweet or they say sour, but from the tree's point of view, this is just the chattering of birds.
It occurs to me one evening as I'm feeding the birds that all I did was put two birds in the aviary, some food and water and nothing else and now there are six of them. I know this is perfectly natural, it's one of the things life is all about, but to have it happen in my bedroom, under my own eyes, is magic.
It is very important that you should choose the person you will marry and stay with that person. There are many people now who believe in serial love, loving one person after another. I don’t think that is good for our mental health. I think we should get it over with. Love is like measles, you know. You only get it once in your lifetime and you are immune forever. I am very happy to say that is what happened to me. I am completely immune to any temptation. All men who have passed my life after I got married might as well have been sticks of furniture.
In real life, I am not a lonely person; I have lots of good friends and am active socially. But there are certain aspects of my life when I have felt very alone, utterly alone, and one of them is when I am performing on my own.
Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly.
I continue to handpick the beetles, mosquitoes feast on me, birds eat the mosquitoes, something else eats the birds, and so on up and down the biotic pyramid.
Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it.
The narrator blames the birds. And you want to blame the birds as well. I blamed the birds for a long time. But in this story everyone is hungry, even the birds. And at this point in the story so many things have gone wrong, so many bad decisions made, that it’s a wonder anyone would want to continue reading.
You see, cuckoos are parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests. When the egg hatches, the baby cuckoo pushes the other baby birds out of the nest. The poor parent birds work themselves to death trying to find enough food to feed the enormous cuckoo child who has murdered their babies and taken their places." "Enormous?" said Jace. "Did you just call me fat?" "It was an analogy." "I am not fat.
I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.
I do my intellectual work inside myself, and once I am with my fellow creatures it is more or less a matter of indifference to me whether or not they are intelligent as long as they are kind, sincere, etc.
Not a lot of people know me outside of athletics and believe it or not I am actually quite shy. The exhilaration of a win or tears after falling are the extremes. It takes me a while to get to know someone, but once I do I am very loyal to my old friends.
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