“When a group of people sing together, we make up a chorus. When birds do, it's more like a whole symphony orchestra.”

“The only way to maximize group creativity—to make the whole more than the sum of its parts—is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.”

“The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.”

“We're broken. It's like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we're with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we're almost whole.”

“Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.”

“Tamsen lay listening to the crashing of the waves on the beach, the symphony of the ocean competing with the orchestral maneuvers of the first birds singing in the dawn.”