Cage Quotes

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Caged Bird

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems

“Because all the monsters have been let out of their cages tonight, no matter what court they belong to. So I may roam wherever I wish until the dawn.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“-She is like the wind, open and free. If I cage the wind, would it die?
-Then don't cage it, Mikhail. Trust it to stay beside you.”
― Christine Feehan, Dark Prince

“I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.”
― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

“Whether you’re beaten or pampered, fed the best foods or starved, kept in filth or kept clean, a cage is still a cage.”
― Anne Bishop, Written in Red

“Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we know that they are not as tender as all that. You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears.”
― Pauline Réage

“A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.”
― Jane Yolen, Girl in a Cage

“He didn’t like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“Are you not going to talk? Just sit there and stare at me like a creeper?"
Aiden cracked a half smile. "You called me that once before."
"Yeah, because you are a creeper.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, Apollyon

“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to get apes to draw these pictures, to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it’s not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Love is the cage and the cage is closed and the door is locked and nobody’s home.”
― dont recall

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.”
― Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison

“After that day, I discovered one indelible truth. I discovered that love wasn’t everything that mattered in life. It was an emotion that not many had the luxury of feeling without any pain attached to it. Many say that love will set you free, but I disagree. Love is a cage, a very painful one; its gilded bars made with yearning, heartache, and unfulfilled dreams. And the moment I realized that love wasn’t necessary to one’s survival I became free. No one would have the power to hurt me again.”
― Mia Asher, Easy Virtue

“We are silver houses of noble and ancient blood, allied with rebels, criminals, servants and thieves. Abilities or not, our ways of life stand in direct opposition. Our goals are not the same. The council chamber is a powder keg. If I'm lucky it will explode. Blow apart any threat of marriage. Destroy the cage they want to put me back in.”
― Victoria Aveyard, King's Cage

“Why would anyone want to live in a cage when we are free persons? This is the point to make, when we can rattle cages it means we are behind bars and are not free.”
― Leviak B. Kelly, Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction

“How appropriate to have my tongue cut out, when silence has been my refuge and my cage.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Don't be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“He will rattle your cage and then break your heart.”
― Jameson Currier, The Third Buddha

“And when you are kept from your home, no matter where you are, you are in a cage.”
― Shane Arbuthnott, Terra Nova

“A bird with feathers made of fire watched over them, in a cage with bars that shone like moonlight.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“...a ripple of silence came toward me. As if the wood thrushes and squirrels and moths held their breath while something passed by.

My bow was already strung. Quietly, I loosely nocked an arrow. Closer and closer the silence crept.

The trees seemed to lean in, their entwined branches locking tighter, a living cage keeping even the smallest of birds from soaring out of the canopy.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“Let your spirit to be free in education do not isolated in a bounded cage.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Living in a cage teaches you helplessness.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cage of Souls

“It’s not true what they say—the truth will set you free. The truth only means you see the walls of your cage.”
― Lauren Nossett, The Professor

“Freedom is the cage, and the cage is never freedom.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“No matter how hard you attempt, forgetting your soulmate is impossible. Love resembles a gilded cage from which escape is futile; you relentlessly collide with its barriers until your wings are stripped away, leaving you like a cage of ribs—imprisoned within a golden cage.”
― Shahid Hussain Raja