“What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself. In some ways the yellow bird was free in the cage. It was free to be alone. It was free to sing. In the forest its feathers would be torn to pieces and its voice choked for ever.
Then I began to think that being oneself, which is liberty, is itself limitation.
We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out,
we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything.”—Gabriel Gale, in “The Yellow Bird.” The Poet and the Lunatics. G. K. Chesterton
