Magpies Quotes

• I have a magpie mind. I like anything that glitters.

  Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet

  Mind, Glitter

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• I'm very superstitious... I never shout at magpies, walk under ladders or put my shoes on the table.

  Fatboy Slim

  Technology, Shoes, Ladders

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Perhaps it was Maggie, perhaps not. In solitary moments magpies will perch on a branch and mutter soft soliloquies of whines and squeals and chatterings, oblivious to what goes on around them. It is one of those things, I suppose, intelligence now and then does, must in fact now and then do, must think, must play, must imagine, must talk to itself. ... What, finally, intelligence could be for: finding your way back.

  Stanley Crawford

  Thinking, Play, Bird

  Stanley Crawford (1992). “A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm”, p.86, UNM Press

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• Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Bird, Might, Taught

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• Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.

  Laini Taylor

  Belief, Fairy Tale, Language

  Laini Taylor (2009). “Lips Touch: Three Times”, p.226, Scholastic Inc.

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• My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

  Alice Munro

  Nests, Information, Scrap

  Alice Munro (2010). “Too Much Happiness”, p.174, Random House

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• Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want.

  David Hockney

  Style, Want, Use

  David Hockney, Manfred Sellink (1992). “David Hockney: grafiek”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• Simon remembered a rhyme his mother used to recite to him, about magpies. You were supposed to count them and say: one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told. "Right," simon said. He had already lost count of the numbers of birds there were. Seven, he guessed. A secret that's never been told. Whatever that was.

  Cassandra Clare

  Mother, Two, Numbers

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1526, Simon and Schuster

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• Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

  Bergen Evans

  Writing, Glitter, Seizing

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• I'm like a magpie. I use lots of different things to build a character.

  Andrew Lincoln

  Character, Different, Use

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told. ~ Simon

  Cassandra Clare

  Two, Secret, Sorrow

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1526, Simon and Schuster

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• We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

  Salman Rushdie

  Language, Stealing

  Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.56, Macmillan

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• Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

  Caroline Leavitt

  Character, People, Use

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• That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It's the fabric of all creation and it's woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They're seed and water and sun. They're everything.

  Laini Taylor

  Dream, Real, Water

  Laini Taylor (2009). “Blackbringer”, p.162, Penguin

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• I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.

  Salman Rushdie

  Art, Book, Light

  Salman Rushdie (2011). “The Moor's Last Sigh”, p.240, Random House

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• I like sparkles; I think I'm a magpie.

  Paloma Faith

  Thinking, Sparkle

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• But you know me-I'm an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I've never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much.

  Tim Pratt

  Knowing, Information, Too Much

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• I never really got obsessed about one thing for long. I was a bit of a butterfly and a magpie.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Butterfly, Long, Obsessed

  "‘Doctor Strange': Benedict Cumberbatch on His Strange Journey to Becoming the Sorcerer Supreme". Interview with Haleigh Foutch, collider.com. September 27, 2016.

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• The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Bird, Looks, Mouths

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.459, GENERAL PRESS

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• The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
  With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
  The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
  With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
  To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
  While small birds nestle in the edge below.

  John Clare

  Fall, White, Swans

  John Clare, “Autumn Birds”

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• I think I need to spend some time with safari but what arrests my attention are salient, sadomasochism, saccadic, and salad days. I think I will go learn more about coral only to learn a lot more about corollary and counterturn and coffin nail. I go from magnificence to means to marquee to maniac to distyle, ductile, hindsight, shell game, veronica, yardstick, ball field, magpie, variegated, and close shave.

  Dara Wier

  Mean, Thinking, Games

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• I'm a bit of a magpie: whatever I see or hear or read feeds into the songs.

  Laura Marling

  Song, Bits

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The way I've talked about my research process is that it was like magpies. I was just sort of moving through all these books and when something shiny would pop out I'd be like, Ooh, I love it! and I'd pluck it out. It's fun to figure out how to use those bits you really love - like I'd read about gold shoes with cork heels. Obviously, Margaret would have to wear those shoes.

  Danielle Dutton

  Fun, Moving, Book

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you.

  David Hockney

  Ideas, Style, Use

  David Hockney, Maurice Tuchman, Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (1988). “David Hockney: a retrospective”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Order, Library

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