Buxton Quotes

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

And everyone on earth knows if you have the respect of a cat it means your soul is worth being around.

With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable

Big Jim’s eyeball fell out. Like, fell the fuck out of his head. It rolled onto the grass, and to be honest, Big Jim and I were both taken aback.

Trust it turned out, was a very beautiful and fragile thing with a taste like wild raspberries and experienced only by the very brave.

Watching the sunrise.....what an act of beauty, of unwavering faith, something to look forward to each and every day.

Where I come from we call what you’re feeling The Black Tide. It will pass. Tides, by their nature, come and go.

Her name translated as "Survivor," but she told me she didn't like it much. I asked her why and she said because she is a female and all females are survivors so it was massively redundant.

I cannot recommend this to you enough: find something that you believe in, right down deep in the depths of your silvery plumage, and then throw your heart at it, blood and valves and veins and all. Because I did this, the world, though brambled and frothing at the mouth, looked more vibrant; blues were bluer, and even the fetid puddles that collected under rusting cars tasted as sweet as summer wine.

A creature can be heartbreakingly powerful and loving while also being a destroyer of worlds.

Bald eagles are majestic as fuck.

Change is inevitable, dear crow. We must adapt. You cannot stop the tide, S.T. You must be more like the log that bobs along its surface.

You know so much, Onida." "I have nine brains—which never stop growing—three hearts, and I can regenerate my arms; but mostly, it's because I'm female." Female. Well, shit. Admittedly, I had limited knowledge of them, but they had always seemed omniscient and formidable to me.

And though Nature is tough, she is always conspiring for your success, encouraging you to evolve. You can even hear her if you listen carefully.

When you have the power to stand up to oppression, you must.

So there we were. A rejected crow with an identity crisis partnering a bloodhound with the IQ of boiled pudding. We were perhaps the most pathetic excuse for an attempted murder on the face of the earth.

Every singe one of us, from amoeba to blue whale to the tenacious bloom that dares to dream of tomorrow, have their own destiny-fulfilling journey as long as their minds and hearts are open.

And we protect The Pack from the hunters, we will fall in love with each moment, singing to the moon that has loved us since we were stars.

We are more powerful when we work together because we look out for one another by being one. That is the code of murder.

All the winged, even fungus gnats, know that you cannot fly if you're carrying too much weight with you. It's a well-known adage, actually: "The light of heart is free to fly.

Big Jim was not a crow, but he knew about the loyalty of murder, which makes him as much crow as any I’d met. “Crows before hoes,” said Big Jim, pretending he wasn’t drowning as I sat on his shoulder and collected his tears.

I cannot recommend this to you enough: find something that you believe in, right down deep in the depths of your silvery plumage, and then throw your heart at it, blood and valves and veins and all.

I’m not sure why everyone hates opossums so much; they may look like someone shaved the buttocks of a poodle and taught it to talk through it’s asshole, but they are generally pretty likable critters.

I explained birthday cake as a spongy mattress of awesome with hidden rivers of delicious goo to celebrate having stayed alive a whole year.

When you love someone with your soul, they never really leave you; they are hemmed into your heart.

Trees are normally very general and all-inclusive with their wisdom pearls. When a tree decides to talk to you, it's a very, very big deal, as if the world stops, as if you are scooped up and held in a snow globe, weightless and womb-like. I felt their vibrations in my feathers, in the flutter of my little black heart.

Penguins, it turns out, are pretty fucking delightful.

I was experiencing acute déjà poo—the feeling that I’d heard this crap before.

Butterflies live short lives because they have mastered the art of living. They serve to pass it on with luminous bursts of joy, bright flickers from the other side.

Doggone it all!

The light of heart is free to fly.

Trust, it turned out, was a very beautiful and fragile thing with a taste like wild raspberries and experienced only by the very brave.

Grief can slam into you like a well-waxed window. But it means the ones you love aren’t lost or forgotten. They’ve made a home in your heart, which is the most permanent place of all.

Her name translated as “Survivor,” but she told me she didn’t like it much. I asked her why and she said because she is a female and all females are survivors so it was massively redundant.

The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men—between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant—is energy, invincible determination—a purpose once fixed, and then—death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it

I had a black belt in running away from things and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single crow in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a Cheeto®.

tater tots are mood-enhancing potato pillows,

Listen; life is worth a fight. Expectation must be shed like winter leaves. Even in death, there is wondrous beauty. And death is not The End.

Things couldn’t get any worse. But then I realized that was a particularly idiotic thing to suggest, because they suddenly did get worse,

Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them.

There were, sadly, some things that were just impossible to explain, like the plot of Inception and CrossFit.

Forgiveness is the ultimate act of strength.

Stories suture up our wounds, stitch us back together. They keep our loved ones alive.

Family doesn’t have to look like you; they can have feathers and scales and scutes. What matters is that you’re loved for who you are in your heart. We survive when we are seen.

success is due to ability than to zeal.

his sermons go on so long that some of the time you feel like begging, "Take me now, Jesus," 'bout halfway through 'em.

Everything talks, you just have to be willing to listen.

And within some amount of time that I can't be sure of because I still didn't really understand time and none of the clocks worked anymore, I got an answer.

I hated these inky fools, these lentil-brained ass noodles.

All the best fiction, they all stem from somewhere. Some might say they’re just the outcome of a wild imagination, but what is imagination? Does it not come from somewhere? Perhaps from somewhere in our souls….who knows?

Crows are harbingers of death and omens, good and bad, according to Big Jim according to Google. Midnight-winged tricksters associated with mystery, the occult, the unknown. The netherworld, wherever it is- Portland? We make people think of the deceased and super angsty poetry. Admittedly we don't help the cause when we happily dine on fish guts in a landfill, buy hey ho.

Susannah Buxton, costume designer: These three dresses demonstrate well the different ways in which we brought the costumes together for the show. Mary's dress was made for her, Edith's was hired - it was previously used in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View - and Sybil's is an original Edwardian summer dress.

And everyone on earth knows that if you have the respect of a cat, it means your soul is one worth being around.

What an extraordinary luxury to cast a shadow.

The woods carry sounds in their slow rhythms, sounds that only a heart can hear.

Never presume to know the journey of another, friend,

There was a ringleader who I honestly couldn't tell from the other ants except that she carried her tiny frame like a gladiator who'd seen cities crumble.

The work was dangerous and made us so tired our bones hurt like old memories.

Sometimes I have the thought that a lot of species are hardwired to refuse to listen to warnings. And that's how they end up extinct.

When MoFos and the furred and feathered worked together it was beautiful and unstoppable. It is what nature intended.

They were tiny words from a tiny bird, but perhaps sometimes all you need is a speck of encouragement, an acorn of belief.

There will be joys that quiver your leaves and betrayals that will sever your roots, poisoning the water you pull. These are the varying notes in the music of living.

Call me naive or a coward and I’ll show you a crow who is here to tell you the goddamned story.

now; this whole situation is a total soup-sandwich,

we will fall in love with each moment, singing to a moon that has loved us since we were stars.

It’s not real. It’s just a story,” I said to her. I felt her great black-and-white head bob up and down. She filled me with waves of frothy hope as she said, “Dear Crow, it is all just story.

Big Jim used to tell me that "money talks," but this stash was mighty silent. I suspect this is one of those MoFo expressions meant to confuse, like when I wasted an entire afternoon searching the yard for an ax and a body because Big Jim said he's buried the hatchet with his friend Mike.

Her vibrancy had returned, perhaps sparked by a sense of purpose, and Dennis and I got to see her in her full glory, a little dog who resembled a cute soufflé but was fueled by a fiery passion.

For every species there is a calling to evolve, an opportunity for change to ensure survival. If a species misses the calling to evolve, they are destined for extinction. This is the law of the earth.

Besides, Big Jim never brought Dennis to the zoo, even though he snuck me in once. My suspicion is that Big Jim had been shielding him from an alpaca exhibit. Inexplicably, Dennis is deathly afraid of alpacas.

And yet I felt a tickling cognizance, dewdrops beading in my mind. Perhaps I'd always known, always been aware that there is more to be seen than what is in front of me. Perhaps I'd deliberately chosen not to acknowledge the story a flower tells or the particular vibration of rocks. When the mole spoke of The Mother Trees, I didn't question him because somewhere deep down, below feather and skin and bleached bone, I knew.

Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting. —Carol Emshwiller

Annie Wilkes had her own interior set of rules; in her way she was strangely prim. She had made him drink water from a floor-bucket; had withheld his medication until he was in agony; had made him burn the only copy of his new novel; had hand-cuffed him and stuck a rag reeking of furniture polish in his mouth; but she would not take the money from his wallet. She brought it to him, the old scuffed Lord Buxton he’d had since college, and put it in his hands. All

I realized, wet and defeated in a puddle of mud, that I was surrounded by devastatingly beautiful things. None of it called attention to itself, no preening and crowing here, Everything just was what it was, intricately complex and simply stunning.

Also, my collection is growing. So far I have infiltrated four hundred homes and pillaged every sock I can find. I cannot explain my fascination with these delightful foot blankets, I can only tell you that it pleases me to carry them around while yowling like my fur is on fire.

Susannah Buxton, costume designer: This dress (above) was made of original beading so delicate that it couldn't be worn again. The red dress (right) is made from a turn-of-the-century Spanish evening dress. We sourced beautiful silk chiffon and had it pleated for the cap sleeves and bands across the front. We built layers for the final effect, with embroidered lace laid over the deep-red satin under-dress. We used evening gloves from the costume house selection, which are "dipped down" - that is, run through with dyes to take the brightness out of the fabric.

Everything is a tide, in and out, in and out. Even your humans. We have every advantage to us in this New World, harnessing the power and knowledge of the old one. A fresh start is sometimes just the ticket. We must recognize that our greatest gifts sometimes come in the ugliest of shells.

In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the … voice of one beloved singing to you alone. — Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “On Love," The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, edited by H. Buxton Forman. (1880)

A chicken lost its composure and clucked.

So with light hearts and bellies full of Day-Glo orange magic, we set off on a quest to find a MoFo who looked like a coconut that could open doors.

Sometimes I have the thought that a lot of species are hardwired to refuse to listen to warnings. And that’s how they end up extinct.

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. —Mark Twain

When the grass fights the concrete, She shall usher in a new era. It was known.

The thing about cats is that they’re always where they want to be.

if you aren’t allowed to love freely, a part of your heart breaks.

Murders are forever, and what happens to one happens to all.

Um, excuse me, but, wait. Uh...uh...are all domestic our allies?" came a frail voice from a bushtit whose name roughly translates as Gary. "During this War, they are all our allies. We will work together," said Kraai. "Not cats though, right?" asked a yellow-breasted western meadowlark. Kraai gave his measured answer: "Not every cat is bad." Mutters of disbelief rose like bubbles. Gary the bushtit, shifting his balance, lifted up his sad twig of a leg stump as a silent rebuttal. "You're right, Gary. Cats can't be trusted. But everything else.

If you are alive—whether of blood or bark—you will be struck by pain, love, longing, fear, anger, and the particular ache of sadness. There will be joys that quiver your leaves and betrayals that will sever your roots, poisoning the water you pull. These are the varying notes in the music of living. Look up, to close your eyes is to stagnate. To rot and stop the song.

Blackwing, the humans were a plague on the earth. They were not able to control their numbers or their consumption of the land, and so Nature did it for them. She is not kind, she is balanced.

There would be no more hot dog-eating contests or NASCAR or picnics in the park or Cheetos or America's Funniest Home Videos or revving truck engines or books or children laughing or fetch with a stick or i{hone updates or shopping or electrical jobs or songs or genius inventions or drunken dancing or Fireball whiskey or snow globes or wedding vows or ugly ties or Christmas hugs or...families

I was going to step up and do the MoFo thing. Take responsibility and bring peace to a world that was falling apart without them. We were losing what makes us human, losing the very best part of us.

Addiction to an electronic world caused the downfall of the MoFos. They’d forgotten to connect with each other, to connect with the creatures who missed them and to Nature as She called for them to come home. The crow part of me knew not to dwell on what was, but the MoFo part of me would always carry my best friend in my heart. Because we never give up on anything, especially love, and that’s the very, very best thing about being a MoFo.

I watched Aaron collapse on the daybed, weeping into his palms. “But I don’t want to say goodbye.” “It’s the hardest thing for anyone to do,” she acknowledged. “Either in life or death, it doesn’t matter. Saying goodbye is the most difficult, yet most common unfinished business bestowed upon us ghosts. But, Rupert, once you cross through your door’s threshold, you’ll understand that there is no such thing as a ‘goodbye’. Though a powerful word, it is only just that: a word. I believe it was J.M. Barrie who had said it himself: ‘Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.’ You and Aaron, even though you are parting ways now, it’s not really a goodbye, but merely a, ‘I’ll see you soon’.” I

About how Mother Nature is not kind, but she is balanced. Every single one of us, from amoeba to blue whale to the tenacious bloom that dares to dream of tomorrow, have their own destiny-fulfilling journey as long as their minds and hearts are open. And how we are all connected by a web that looks gossamer but is stronger than a chain-link fence. And though Nature is tough, she is always conspiring for your success, encouraging you to evolve. You can even hear her if you listen carefully.

Elephants command attention. But their size is not what makes the heart skip a beat. It's how they walk with the world's weight on their shoulders, sensitive, noble, their hearts pulsing and as wide open as the great grey leaves that are their ears. MoFos used to say that an elephant never forgets and until this very moment, I hadn't understood what that really meant. An elephant's memories don't reside in organ or skin or bone. They live closer to tree time than we do, and their memories reside in the soul of their species, which dwarfs them in size, is untouchable, and lives on forever to honor every story. They carry stories from generations back, as far as when their ancestors wore fur coats, That is why, when you are close to an elephant, you feel so deeply. If they so choose, they have the ability to hold your sadness so you may safely sit in the lonely seat of loss, still hopeful and full of love. Their great secret is that they know everything is a tide—not a black tide, but the natural breath of life—in and out, in and out, and to be with them is to know this too, And here they were, suddenly lifting the weight of our sadness for us, carrying it in the curl of their trunks. We all sat together in our loss, not dwelling, but remembering. For an elephant never forgets,

I can’t complain. I’m living the good life. I’ve hunted and pillaged and fathered 130 kittens—that I know of—with twenty-six different mousers and none of this shit interferes with my sixteen hours of daily sleep. You can fuck off now. I have nothing more to say to you.

I have conducted experiments using techniques that used to be fairly effective—knocking over the French press, unraveling their shoddy knitting, chewing the covers of every book in the library, shitting on pillows, shredding the couch, eating all the Ethernet snakes, and pissing all over bed blanket—but they seem to no longer be concerned. Admittedly, I’m impressed. I respect the negligible number of shits currently being given. Case in point: one of my Mediocre Servants left her arm in the living room, which I believe speaks to their general ineptitude. I played with it momentarily, but found its pungency off-putting and resumed licking my anus.

If you are alive—whether of blood or bark—you will be struck by pain, love, longing, fear, anger, and the particular ache of sadness. There will be joys that quiver your leaves and betrayals that will sever your roots, poisoning the water you pull. These are the varying notes in the music of living. Look up, to close your eyes is to stagnate. To rot and stop the song. My gift to you is to know that we are here, all around you, talking to one another and dreaming of your success. Sorcery is everywhere, in the silver stroll of a slug and lighting up the very veins of you. Open those beautiful eyes to a world who is a mosaic of magic. She is just waiting for you to notice.

Chapter 28 Genghis Cat Gracing Whatever Shithole This Is, Washington, USA You can all relax now, because I am here. What did you think? I’d run for safety at the whim of a fucking parrot with under-eye bags like pinched scrotums? Did you suspect I—a ninja with feather-wand fastness and laser-pointer focus—had the spine of a banana slug? Then you are a shit-toned oink with the senses of a sniveling salamander. Then you don’t know Genghis Cat. I look around and can see that we are surrounded by The Bird Beasts, those crepe-faced, hair ball–brained fuck goblins. I intensely dislike these lumpy whatthefuckareyous who straddle between the Mediocre Servant and animal worlds, trying to be one thing and really not being, like imitation crabmeat in a sushi log that is really just fucking whitefish and WE ALL KNOW IT. “Would you like a little of the crabmeat, Genghis?” my Mediocre Servants seemed to ask with their blobfish lips and stupid faces. “THAT’S FUCKING WHITEFISH, YOU REGURGITATED MOLES!” I’d yowl, and then I’d steal the sushi log and run off and growl very much so they couldn’t have it back, and later I would pee on their night pillows for good measure. I cannot imagine their lives before me. We mustn’t think of those bleak dark ages. But the Beasts are dangerous. I have watched them morph and chew into a house. I have seen them with spider legs and second stomachs and camouflage skins. I have seen them tear the legs off a horse and steal flight from those with feathers. Orange and I have lost family to their fuckish appetites. But they are still fakish faking beasts and I’m fucking Genghis Cat. They are imitation crab and Genghis is filet mignon Fancy Feast, bitch. Probably I should come clean here and tell you that I’m immortal. I always suspected it but can confirm it now that I have surpassed the allocated nine lives. I’m somewhere around life 884, give or take seventy-eight. Some mousers have called me a god, but I insist on modesty. I also don’t deny it. I might be a god. It seems to fit. It feels right. A stealthy, striped god with an exotically spotted tummy—it seems certain, doesn’t it to you? I’m 186 percent sure at this point. Orange insists we stay away from the Beasts all the time, but I only let Orange think he’s in charge. Orange is incredibly sensitive, despite being the size of a Winnebago. He hand-raised each of my kittens and has terrible nightmares, and I have to knead my paws on him to calm him down. Orange and I have a deal. I will kill anything that comes to harm Orange and Orange will continue to be the reason I purr.