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Pigeon Quotes

Browse 22 quotes about Pigeon.

Pigeon Quotes

“Ever since she was a young girl, [Patricia Highsmith] had felt an extraordinary empathy for animals, particularly cats. The creatures, she said, 'provide something for writers that humans cannot: companionship that makes no demands or intrusions, that is as restful and ever-changing as a tranquil sea that barely moves'. Her affection for cats was 'a constant as was feline companionship wherever her domestic situation permitted,' says Kingsley. 'As for animals in general, she saw them as individual personalities often better behaved, and endowed with more dignity and honesty than humans. Cruelty to or neglect of any helpless living creature could turn her incandescent with rage.' Janice Robertson remembers how [...] Highsmith was walking through the streets of Soho when she saw a wounded pigeon lying in the gutter. 'Pat decided there and then that this pigeon should be rescued,' says Janice. 'Although I think Roland persuaded her that it was past saving, she really was distraught. She couldn't bear to see animals hurt.' Bruno Sager, Highsmith's carer at the end of her life, recalls the delicacy with which the writer would take hold of a spider which had crawled into the house, making sure to deposit it safely in her garden. 'For her human beings were strange - she thought she would never understand them - and perhaps that is why she liked cats and snails so much,' he says.”

“One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died. I was devastated and was going to use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand and he was out cold, convulsing on the floor.”

“Pigeon had been overbearing from the start, but it had always been a welcome balance to her father's disinterest, and Zoey had never before wished for a separate existence from her. But something had shifted, just slightly, in her relationship with her bird since she'd arrived on Mallow Island. Coming here was the last break from the only world she'd ever known, and only Pigeon was left. She was a childhood relic like a stuffed animal or a security blanket, and Zoey didn't want to say goodbye to her. Where would she go? Would she ever mean as much to someone else as she did to Zoey? But nor did Zoey know how to fit her into this life she had to forge on her own.”

“We have always had a curious connection to birds in my family. My grandfather was even called the Birdman of Havana because he kept pigeons. He named them after family members long since gone. I spent my childhood believing the birds were actually these people, simply transformed. I remember the musty, sweet scent of them. I remember the bloom of dust on their wings. My favorite was the one named after my mother. When my grandfather died, my brother set the birds free and I hated seeing them fly away. I did not want them to leave me, as nearly everyone I had ever loved had left me. But my brother said we were free like them now, and we left to cross the straits that very night.”

“In Amorous Creeping by Stewart Stafford I scaled a trellis in randy pursuit, A rose in teeth for my paramour, A thorn lurking by a naked stem, Palmy, engorged and prescient. A pigeon said to douse my ardour, A talkative fowl, plainly no pidgin, Snorts for this priggish counsel, Blind shoots, driving me upward. A wriggling worm to her chamber, Inside I crept as she lay sleeping, Sweeping a spectral sheet off her, To lay until the dawn chorus sings. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

“Most people with whom I have discussed pigeons hold them in low esteem. I have history with pigeons, or perhaps I would not even have noticed the small creature. The great gentleness I have found seems to have escaped most people’s notice. Of course, like most humans, I did not recognize their true worth at all until I got to know one very well.”