Die Dornenvögel

Ralph de Bricassart: [telling the legend of the thorn bird to Meggie] There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Young Meggie Cleary: What does it mean, Father?

Ralph de Bricassart: That the best... is bought only at the cost of great pain.