Parrots Quotes

“There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel", and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots?
...
However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her.”
― E.H. Aitken

“It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Mr. Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yellow, grass green. The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and small green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A hot of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shrill madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hell.”
― Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie

“There’s two types of people on this great Earth, the Doers and the Dreamers and they share one thing in common: Dreams. The dreamers demonstrates the ability to have an imagination.
The doers follows through their ability to fulfill their destiny through patience and perseverance.”
― Jes Fuhrmann, The Diary of Pink Pearl Continues: I'm Wide Awake and Born Again! The Quadrilogy Volume 4

“One of the parrots was very friendly with...Master of the Robes. He used to feed it nuts. As it nibbled from his fingers, he used to stroke its head, at which the bird appeared to enter a state of ecstasy. I very much wanted this kind of friendliness and several times tried to get a similar response, but to no avail. So I took a stick to punish it. Of course, thereafter it fled at the sight of me. This was a very good lesson in how to make friends: not by force but by compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama

“I wish that, like you, I could have spent my life transported aloft, as it were, every day, in music. Instead, I've lived like a caffeinated parrot.”
― Mark Helprin, Paris in the Present Tense

“Who asked you to the funeral anyway? Were you acquainted with the late parrot?”
― Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One

“A third principal states that the more intense the interaction between a student and its models, the more effective the training. Intensity - the extent to which tutors arouse a response in a student - is determined from direct observations of interactants (e.g., by recording emotional responses) or from indirect measures (e.g., blood pressure or hormone levels).
One implication, supported by data reviewed in Pepperberg and Neapolitan, is that, for both humans and birds, intense interaction requires one or more tutors. Of course, increasing the intensity of the interaction may not always increase learning: overly nurturant models may inhibit learning by preventing a student from experimenting on his or her own and overly aggressive models may arouse fear or counter-aggression strong enough to block processing of any input.”
― Irene M. Pepperberg, The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots

“Wendell looked at the faerie stone in his hand, shrugged, and smashed it against the floor.
Out burst a flock of parrots. The birds shrieked and squawked, and the sheerie were momentarily distracted--- not afraid, they lunged at them like cats. Each parrot seemed to be carrying a tropical flower in its beak.
Wendell hurled another stone. When it smashed, glittering banners unfurled upon the museum walls, covered in the faerie script. The ceiling was suddenly painted in frescoes of Folk lounging in forest pools, surrounded by green foliage. Vases of unfamiliar flowers appeared on every surface next to bottles of wine in ice buckets, and the air filled with the muffled sound of violins, as if drifting in from the next room.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands