Patter Songs

Famous quotes containing the words patter and/or songs:

    “Houndsditch was ... a crumbling and smoke-grimed necropolis in boarded windows, mummified everywhere by old railings, stagnant air, and cobwebs, where draughty hallways reek with the smell of stale cabbage, Blakean children weep soot, and merchants patter with Mammon and make God evanescent.”
    —Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)

    “And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
    Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
    With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
    On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
    And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.”
    —John Ashbery (b. 1927)