Swan Song Quotes

Once upon a time, man had a love affair with fire.

Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful, it just takes the right touch

Put one foot forward and the other will get you to where you are going~!" Bag Lady, Swan Song

This rough magic I here abjure, and, when I have required Some heavenly music, which even now I do, To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.

One Step...and then the next gets you where you're going." - Sister Creep

...the magic place of soul-soothing dreams, where the silken sheen of polished glass under soft lights made her think of how lovely Heaven was going to be.

This was a dank, sinister chill: the chill of shadows where poison toadstools grown, their ruddy colors beckoning a child to come, come take a taste of candy.

...just shattered structures rising up like rotten teeth from a diseased jaw.

...he was a scream wrapped up in straw, a little, weak, vicious thing gnashing inside a monstrous facade...

take it one step at a time. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

Let her destroy me if she will. Better to be destroyed by her love than to never have known it. Erik Book 2~Chanson de l'Ange: The Angel's Song

It is a contradiction this creek- a hundred thousand years old but renewed with each rainfall.

This species, the mute swan, became holy to Apollo. In remembrance of the death of the beloved Phaeton the bird is silent all its life until the very moment of its death, when it sings with terrible melancholy its strange and lovely goodbye, its swan song. In honour of Cygnus the young of all swans are called ‘cygnets’.

as she’d watched him stagger away Swan had realized that forgiveness crippled evil, drew the poison from it like lancing a boil.

The song instantly insisted it'd never existed.

...hot shouts of neon...

For just as the swan’s last song is the sweetest of its life, so loss is made endurable by love and it is love that will echo through eternity.

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.

...and his bones were a cage of ice.

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

God A’mighty, what’s the point of livin’ if you don’t fight for what you hold dear?

Closure is a false harmony, a siren song masquerading as a swan song.

I too am a poet who has found some favour with the Muse. I too have written songs. I too have heard the shepherds call me bard. But I take it from them with a grain of salt: I have the feeling that I cannot yet compare with Varius or Cinna, but cackle like a goose among melodious swans.

She looked like the daughter of a marriage between ice and fire.

Swan dive down eleven stories high Hold your breath until you see the light You can sink to the bottom of the sea Just don't go without me

Something inside her brain cracked like a funhouse mirror that existed only to reflect a distorted world,

Something that resembled a small, unblinking scarlet eye opened in the center of the flame, and he wanted to scream.

You and I have been happy; we haven’t been happy just once, we’ve been happy a thousand times. The chances that spring, that’s for everyone, like in the popular songs, may belong to us too – the chances are pretty bright at this time because as usual, I can carry most of contemporary literary opinion, liquidated, in the hollow of my hand – and when I do, I see the swan floating on it and – I find it to be you and you only…. Forget the past – what you can of it, and turn about and swim back home to me, to your haven for ever and ever – even though it may seem a dark cave at times and lit with torches of fury; it is the best refuge for you – turn gently in the waters through which you move and sail back…

Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful, it just takes the right touch.

Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful,” she said. “It just takes the right touch.

Take modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch.

If a person’s gotta die, he oughta die tryin’ to go home to somebody he loves, don’t you think?

I judge God, or the power that we know as God, to be very, very weak. A dying candle, if you like, surrounded by darkness. And the darkness is closing in.

CG: WELCOME TO THE TROLLOCAUST. THE PAINSTAKING GENOCIDE OF YOUR FRAGILE SELF ESTEEM WILL BE MY SWAN SONG.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth. What the paper-folding diagrams fail to mention is that each fold enacts itself upon the secret marrow of your ethics, the axioms of your thoughts. Whether this is the most important thing the diagrams fail to mention is a matter of opinion.

The insect kept going, out of the light’s range and into the darkness on its purposeful journey. Who am I to kill such a thing? he asked himself. Who am I to deliver death to even the lowest form of life?

Serving men cleared away the swan, hardly touched. Cersei beckoned for the sweets. "I hope you like blackberry tarts." "I love all sorts of tarts." "Oh, I've know that for a long while. Do you know why Varys is so dangerous?" "Are we playing riddles now? No." "He doesn't have a cock." "Neither do you." And don't you just hate that, Cersei? ""Perhaps, I'm dangerous too. You, on the other hand, are as big a fool as every other man. That worm between your legs does half your thinking.

Josh was beginning to believe the whole thing was like professional wrestling: the superpowers put on their masks and stomped around, roaring threats and swinging wildly at each other, but it was a game of macho, strutting bluff.

Sometimes you can see a person’s inside face—but only for a second or two—if you look close and hard enough. The eyes give away the inside face, and likely as not it’s a whole lot different than the mask that’s stuck on the outside.

and as she’d watched him stagger away Swan had realized that forgiveness crippled evil, drew the poison from it like lancing a boil.

The demons almost got me! But glory be to Jesus, and when he arrives on his flying saucer from the planet Jupiter I'll be there on the golden shore to kiss his hand!

Tomorrow always has the potential for sunshine.

hand over her facial features. Swan’s touch was as soft as smoke.

His face looked like he’d been weaned on ketchup.

Josh Hutchins’s battered old Pontiac gave a wheeze like an old man with phlegm in his lungs.

Once upon a time, he thought, we had a love affair with fire.

Dear sweet Jesus, come down in your flying saucer and take me with you!

If ... if you were God ... would you destroy this world?” Hannan

And he hoped that if the time ever came for that elemental fist to come crashing down, its wielder might take a moment of pause as well.

Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol, gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming. You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents of what you packed were written inside the boxes. Because you think swans are overrated. Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence. Because you underline everything you read, and circle the things you think are important, and put stars next to the things you think I should think are important, and write notes in the margins about all the people you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there. Because you make that pork recipe you found in the Frida Khalo Cookbook. Because when you read that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed over the windows, you still believe someone outside can see you. And one day five summers ago, when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments— there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew, which you paid for with your last damn dime because you once overheard me say that I liked it.

When these images clash—as in The Fascist octupus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot—it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.

Your heart plays a song like a broken music box, but nothing ever sounded quite so beautiful to me. Together, in the dance of wounded-wing swans we’ll rise above the ruins, melting into the golden light.

Look—my feet don’t hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I’m not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn.

Aren't we all alone?" I asked with a rueful smile. "Yes. I think in the end, we all are, no matter what the songs and happy stories say. I guess it's just a matter of who we choose to be alone with." "That's why I come here, you know. To be alone with other people. There's isolation in a crowd. You're hidden. Safe.

And what else can I do, lame old man that I am, than sing the praise of God? If I were a nightingale, I would perform the work of a nightingale, and if I were a swan, that of a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, and I must sing the praise of God. This is my work, and I accomplish it, and I will never abandon my post for as long as it is granted to me to remain in it; and I invite all of you to join me in this same song.

derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i'm stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn't bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don't i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize? let me get under your skin. i want to know what your fears taste like. i want to consume.

an answer. Josh smiled. “I guess I am.

There is something explicity satisfying about people who observe you for just who you are.

I ain’t afraid to die now. Uh-uh! See, I always figured it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

But he’d looked into her eyes and seen forgiveness, and he could not stand up to such a thing. Forgiveness, even for him.

She stared at them with yearning. Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one.

This was turning out to be the greatest game he’d ever played.

I popped the last Tylenol about three days before the bombs hit. A poem I was writing fell to pieces.

Rudy had been a kick in life. But in death he was a real drag.

Do you ... do you love me?” “Like a mirror,” Friend answered.

Swan was approaching, trying to run but being thrown off balance by the weight of her head.

But Sister’s bag was there like a shield, and the dagger punched through but couldn’t penetrate a frozen turkey dinner.

Only echoes answer me.

Aaron’s lower lip trembled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But… if there ain’t any good soldiers, how do you keep the bad soldiers from winnin’?

But he’d inherited the mistakes of the generations of presidents before him,

It was certainly a miracle that they were still alive, and a corpse that could sit up and speak was not something you saw every day.

The color reminded Josh of what the summer sky had looked like when he himself was a child, with all the tomorrows before him and no place to go in any particular hurry.

I want to be a child again, he thought as the other men at the table looked at him. Dear God, I don’t want to be at the controls anymore!

nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look--my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

I believe,' she told him, 'that this is a gift from God.' 'Right.' He smiled bitterly. 'Well, look around. Just look. Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be insane?

I thought of all the nights I’d spent in temperature controlled clubs and restaurants, under artificial lights, drinking artificial cocktails with artificial friends. Artificial problems. Artificial drama. How many real, glorious nights had I missed? Nights like this, when the universe dances for you, and you become a tiny but beautiful note of the magical song it sings.

a few of them were already hollering for help, but most were shocked silent. His mother had looked at him, orange juice dripping from her hair and face, and said, “Next year we go to the beach.

Eventually, decades later, when the king was dying, the queen gently ushered everybody out into the corridor, closed the door to the royal bedchamber, and got into bed with her husband. She started singing to him. They laughed. He was short of breath, but he could still laugh. They asked each other, Is this silly? Is this...pretentious? But they both knew that everything there was to say had been said already, over and over, across the years. And so the king, relieved, released, free to be silly, asked her to sing him a song from his childhood. He didn't need to be regal anymore, he didn't need to seem commanding or dignified, not with her. They were, in their way, dying together, and they both knew it. It wasn't happening only to him. So she started singing. They shared one last laugh - they agreed that the cat had a better voice than she did. Still, she sang him out of the world.

That had been close, she thought. The demons almost got me! But glory be to Jesus, and when he arrives in his flying saucer from the planet Jupiter I’ll be there on the golden shore to kiss his hand!

Earth and sky, rock and wind, bear witness! By the power of the Swift Sure Hand, I claim this ground and sain it with a name: Bwgan Bwlch! Power of fire I have over it, Power of wind I have over it, Power of thunder I have over it, Power of wrath I have over it, Power of heavens I have over it, Power of earth I have over it, Power of worlds I have over it! As tramples the swan upon the lake, As tramples the horse upon the plain, As tramples the ox upon the meadow, As tramples the boar upon the track, As tramples the forest host of heart and hind, As tramples all quick things upon the earth, I do trample and subdue it, And drive all evil from it! In the name of the Secret One, In the name of the Living One, In the name of the All-Encircling One, In the name of the One True Word, it is Bwgan Bwlch, Let it so remain as long as men survive To breath the name.

Wearily, she sat up. Jesus was not coming today. She would have to die later, she decided. There was no use lying out here like a fool in the rain. One step, she thought. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

Oh, Issyk-Kul, my Issyk-Kul--my unfinished song! Why did I have to remember that day when I came here with Asel and stopped on the same rise, right above the water? Everything was the same. The blue-and-white waves ran up the yellow shore holding hands. The sun was setting behind the mountains, and at the far end of the lake the water was tinged with pink. The swans wheeled over the water with excited, exultant cries. They soared up and dropped down on outspread wings that seemed to hum. They whipped up the water and started wide, foaming circles. Everything was the same, only there was no Asel with me. Where are you, my slender poplar in a red kerchief, where are you now?

The old man, who shuffled along with great difficulty, bent double, was blind. To attract the attention of passersby,he sang a heart wrenching tune. Every time my father heard the song, he said to himself that society must change.

...We’re going to have asshole stew tonight, folks.” “Asshole stew?” Sister asked, and frowned. “Uh… what the hell is that?” “It means you’re a stupid asshole if you don’t eat it, because that’s all we’ve got. Come on, let’s have the cans.

The Basement was an underground shelter in Delaware where the first lady, the president’s seventeen-year-old son, ranking cabinet members and staff people would—they hoped—be protected from all but a direct hit by a one-megaton nuclear warhead.

for flatboat barges. They would talk about the day Swan met a boatload of survivors from the destroyed land that had been called Russia, and nobody could understand their language, but she talked to them and heard them through the miraculous jeweled ring of glass that

Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions: that everything's for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can't. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape's been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it's the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretense that I can't hear them. And I can't, because I'm after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slam of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meaning are lilting and oblique. I don't let on to everyone, but lean close, and I'll whisper: My mothers was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look - my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

And she was aware of something else in the eyes of the mask he was wearing, something beyond the cold, lizardlike sheen of evil, something deeper ... and almost human. She remembered seeing the same thing in the eyes of Uncle Tommy the night he’d crushed her flowers, back in the Kansas trailer park seven years ago; it was something wandering and longing, forever locked away from the light and maddened like a tiger in a dark cage. It was dumb arrogance and bastard pride, stupidity and rage stoked to atomic power. But it was something of a little boy, too, wailing and lost.

Hans?” The president’s voice was as soft as a child’s. “If ... if you were God ... would you destroy this world?” Hannan didn’t respond for a moment. Then, “I suppose ... I’d wait and watch. If I were God, I mean.” “Wait and watch for what?” “To find out who wins. The good guys or the bad guys.” “Is there a difference anymore?

few

his whole body was jammed tight as a monk’s jockstrap.

Her eyes found his. “Like the wind. Or a train’s whistle, way far off. Or thunder, long before you see the lightning. A lot of things.” “How long have you been able to hear it?” “Since I was a little girl.” Josh couldn’t help but smile. Swan misread it. “Are you making fun of me?” “No. Maybe ... I wish I could hear a sound like that. Do you know what it is?” “Yes,” Swan answered. “It’s death.

trays of pastries from his castle kitchens, cream swans and spun-sugar unicorns, lemon cakes in the shape of roses, spiced honey biscuits and blackberry tarts, apple crisps and wheels of buttery cheese.

we had a love affair with fire, the president of the United States thought as the match that he’d just struck to light his pipe flared beneath his fingers. He stared into it, mesmerized by its color—and as the fire grew he had the vision of a tower of flame a thousand feet tall, whirling across the country he loved, torching cities and towns, turning rivers to steam, ripping across the ruins of heartland farms and casting

From uncoiled wings of the burning swan after sea of blood was born out of green caterpillar that skin sheared moon from cloud’s underbelly ordered waves to abolish horoscopes on crabs’ breasts . On the evergreen epiglotis of lotus full to the brim the pollen fiddling honey bee waved her double scarf searched for drunk village of pride red beating crowd humming songs sleeping side by side of worried distance ( From 'Selected Poems' 1961 - 2004

The devotional came on. A minister talked about beating swords into plowshares. Then the “Star Spangled Banner” played over scenes of majestic snow-capped mountains, wide, waving fields of wheat and corn, running streams, verdant forests and mighty cities; it ended with an image of the American flag, stretched out and immobile on a pole sunk into the surface of the moon. The picture froze, lingered for a few seconds, and then static filled the screen as the local station signed off.

Is it really ten ladies dancing?" Lillian asked him, and Swift grinned. "My lady, I've never been able to remember any part of that song." "You know," Annabelle said contemplatively, "I've always understood why the swans are swimming and the geese are a-laying. But why in heaven's name are the lords a-leaping?" "They're chasing after the ladies," Swift said reasonably. "Actually I believe the song was referring to Morris dancers, who used to entertain between courses at long medieval feasts," Daisy informed them. "And it was a leaping sort of dance?" Lillian asked, intrigued. "Yes, with longswords, after the manner of primitive fertility rites." "A well-read woman is a dangerous creature," Swift commented with a grin, leaning down to press his lips against Daisy's dark hair.

He listened to the keening of the wind whistling through holes in the walls, and he pondered the thought that there might be something out there in the dark—God or Devil or something more elemental than either—that looked at humankind as Josh had viewed the roach—less than intelligent, certainly nasty, but struggling onward on its journey, never giving up, fighting through obstacles or going around them, doing whatever it had to do to survive. And he hoped that if the time ever came for that elemental fist to come crashing down, its wielder might take a moment of pause as well.

What makes you come alive? What keeps you going ? Is there hope in your heart still or has the weariness of the world attached itself to you like a limpet leaving you afraid and passionless? Do you wake up with a smile and stars in your eyes after restless, feverish soul-searching in the night? Do you dream, dream beyond what is possible and beyond the narrow confines of your jaded existence? How old do you feel? How much in love can you fall? How much step is there in your dance, o how many notes left in your song ? Have you decided to sit by and watch others dance or weep at the dying notes of your own swan song? Shake your lethargy. Come alive to innocence once more. Believe past your own jaded cynicism. Pretend you are young once more. Jump up with a spring in your feet, fall breathlessly in love again. Let the colors of the world wash over your walls, brushing the greys away. Let the sunlight of hope flood through your doubting self, o let the music play. Dance till you ache and drop, laugh till you cry. Sing till your lungs burst, and journey till the very road ends and dream by the moonless starless nights. Sleep with a secret smile on your lips, your body flush with the imprints of lips. Come alive, my dearest ...reclaim yourself from the living dead. Life beckons

The Southern Cross gets the award for the greatest hype among all eighty-eight constellations. By listening to Southern Hemisphere people talk about this constellation, and by listening to songs written about it, and by noticing it on the national flags of Australia, New Zealand, Western Samoa, and Papua New Guinea, you would think we in the North were somehow deprived. Nope. Firstly, one needn’t travel to the Southern Hemisphere to see the Southern Cross. It’s plainly visible (although low in the sky) from as far north as Miami, Florida. This diminutive constellation is the smallest in the sky—your fist at arm’s length would eclipse it completely. Its shape isn’t very interesting either. If you were to draw a rectangle using a connect-the-dots method you would use four stars. And if you were to draw a cross you would presumably include a fifth star in the middle to indicate the cross-point of the two beams. But the Southern Cross is composed of only four stars, which more accurately resemble a kite or a crooked box. The constellation lore of Western cultures owes its origin and richness to centuries of Babylonian, Chaldean, Greek, and Roman imaginations. Remember, these are the same imaginations that gave rise to the endless dysfunctional social lives of the gods and goddesses. Of course, these were all Northern Hemisphere civilizations, which means the constellations of the southern sky (many of which were named only within the last 250 years) are mythologically impoverished. In the North we have the Northern Cross, which is composed of all five stars that a cross deserves. It forms a subset of the larger constellation Cygnus the swan, which is flying across the sky along the Milky Way. Cygnus is nearly twelve times larger than the Southern Cross.