Quotes on Gulls

The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.

(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother_x000D_ _x000D_ to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this_x000D_ _x000D_ gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,_x000D_ _x000D_ Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Leaves like rusty tin_x000D_ _x000D_ for the desolate mind that has seen the end-_x000D_ _x000D_ the barest glimmerings._x000D_ _x000D_ Leaves aswirl with gulls_x000D_ _x000D_ made wild by winter.

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it; knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.

For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.