Fours Quotes

Nature is crooked. I wanted right angles and straight lines. Ice! Oh, why do they all drip? You cut yourself opening a can of tuna fish and you die. One puncture in your foot and your life leaks out through your toe. What are they for, moose antlers? Get down on all fours and live. You're protected on your hands and knees. It's either that or wings. ~ Paul Theroux

I hear footsteps and Four's hands wrap around my wrists. I let him pry my hands from my eyes. He encloses one of my hands perfectly between two of his. The warmth of his skin overwhelms the ache in my fingers from holding the bars. "You all right?" he asks, pressing our hands together.
"Yeah."
He starts to laugh. ~ Veronica Roth

They both fought to catch their breath, though Megan's oxygen deprivation had nothing to do with the game.
"You okay?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, you?" she replied. Every inch of her body was throbbing to touch him again.
"Yeah," he replied with a huge grin. He pushed himself around and got on all fours in front of her, pausing there with his face inches from hers. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered, his breath warm on her face.
Megan somehow managed to reply. "Me too."
Then Finn pushed himself up and headed back toward the centre of the yard. For a moment, Megan couldn't move. Then Doug walked over and offered his arm. Megan grasped it thankfully and he yanked up to her shaky legs.
"Who's all in a twist now?" he asked with a smirk.
Megan laughed and shoved him from behind as they headed back to the line. ~ Kate Brian

It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls on all fours, with her rear in the air and her buttocks busting out of her breeches. ~ Emile Zola

forming the "hydrogen bond"... is dynamic, with the exchange occurring in a few billionths of a billionth of a second. Since water molecules can "lose" two hydrogen atoms and "win" two by way of their oxygen atom, they are on average regrouped in fours, and the network of water, whether in our glass or in our cells is tetrahedral. All the same, this arrangement is not perfect in liquid water (otherwise the water would be a solid crystal), and locally there are many defects in the network. Although the motif of four water molecules is the most common in "linear" hydrogen bonds, the water molecule sometimes has a "forked tongue" with bifurcated liaisons, which creates arrangements of three or five, or even two or six molecules. This variability prevents water from being structured over a great distance and enables it to remain in a liquid state at the ambient temperature. ~ Denis Le Bihan

Martha would come over every week and check on Mia and work with her on relaxation and breathing exercises to prepare for the natural labor. Jenny was on board with the natural thing too, so of course she and Mia dragged Tyler and me to the Bradley Birthing Method classes.

It was hysterical; we had to get in all kinds of weird poses with the girls while they mimicked being in labor. We would massage their backs while they were perched on all fours, moaning. One of the hardest things I've ever done is contain my laughter during those classes. Mia was the freakin' teacher's pet because she was taking it so seriously.

Right around the third class, they showed us a video of a live birth. I had nightmares for a week after that. Tyler and I agreed that we had to find a way to get out of going to the classes.

We hadn't mutually agreed on a plan, so during the fifth class, Tyler took it upon himself and used his own bodily gifts to get us into a heap of trouble. Tyler is lactose intolerant, and he has to take these little white tablets every time he eats cheese. The morning of the class, he stopped by the studio with a half-eaten pizza. I didn't even think twice about it until that night in class during our visualization exercises when this god-awful, horrendous odor overtook our senses.

At first everyone kept quiet and just looked around for the source. There wasn't a sound to accompany the lethal attack, so everyone went into investigatio ~ Renee Carlino

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out
of their way to say that it is like something else.
What foes it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot
of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus
hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf
on
the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there
are
a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple
and gold
cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and
big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Fra ~ Ogden Nash

We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk - always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part - there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it. ~ Miranda July

Travelling the dusty highways in the early evenings, just as the light began to fade, I would look out along the perpendicular dirt tracks that joined the road at intervals. They undulated away gently into the distance; slow streams of people in twos and threes and fours walked them, through the haze, talking easily, making their way back from wherever lay beyond. I longed to take every one of these turnings, to step out along every track in the morning, to return at dusk, to see what lay over each of these horizons and to share in the stories of those that returned from them. My trajectory, and that of each one of us, was that of a meteor, shedding millions of tiny sparks of possibility with every passing second, each with the capacity to ignite a flash of experience, but nearly all of which quickly burned up and vanished as it was left behind. The fire that moved forward was the flame of our lives. ~ Luke F.D. Marsden

Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development," has become the most vicious animal of all! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

I scroll past images every bit as violent and beautiful as Jeb's paintings: luminious, rainbow-skinned creatures with bulbous eyes and sparkly, silken wings who carry knives and swords; hideous, naked hobgoblins in chains who crawl on all fours and have corkscrew tails and cloven feet like pigs; silvery pixielike beings trapped in cages and crying oily black tears. ~ A.G. Howard

You see, Dr. Sherrington,' the devil said, 'we are more alike than you think.' He got up again on all fours looking in the direction of the voice. It was time to face the devil. ~ Lawren Leo

I say, I don't think the human frame is very thoughtfully constructed for this sleuthhound business. If one could go on all fours, or had eyes in ones knees, it would be a lot more practical'… 'What luck! Here's a deep, damp ditch on the other side, which I shall now proceed to fall into.' A slithering crash proclaimed that he had carried out his intention. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

And every time I saw her, she seemed more beautiful. She just seemed to glow. I'm not talking like a hundred-watt bulb; she just had this warmth to her. Maybe it came from climbing that tree. Maybe it came from singing to chickens. Maybe it came from whacking at two-by-fours and dreaming about perpetual motion. I don't know. All I know is that compared to her, everybody else seemed so ordinary.
I had flipped. ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

Gabe watched, holding his breath as the figure slowly turned. The body moved in an almost unnatural way as it shifted and crawled slowly on all fours across the floor. When the candlelight at last fell on the figure, Gabe could make out the auburn hair of his beloved Sophie. Her hair was matted, greasy, and hung in her face.
Gabe saw her shoulders were hollow looking and her skin was almost glowing white. Gabe caught sight of Sophie's fingers, her knuckles were bloody, and her nails cracked and peeling. Instinctively, Gabe fell to his knees and crawled to Sophie. Without even giving it a thought, he grabbed her hands and pulled them closer to the light. ~ Wendy Owens

Nearly everything in life goes in threes and fours. ~ Ninette De Valois

You go first," Four says. Eric shrug. "Edward." Four leans against the door frame and nods. The moonlight makes his eyes bright. He scans the group of transfer initiates briefly, without calculation and says, "I want the Stiff." ...
Heat rushes into my cheeks and I don't know whether to be angry at the people laughing at me or flattered by the fact that he chose me first. "Got something to prove?" asks Eric, with his trademark smirk. "Or you just picking the weak ones, so that if you lose, you'll have someone to blame it on?" Four shrugs. "Something like that." Angry. I should be angry. I scowl at my hands. Whatever Four's strategy is, it's based on the idea that I am weaker than the other initiates. And it gives me a bitter taste in my mouth. i have to prove him wrong
I have to. ~ Veronica Roth

She was still loping around on all fours, her fists blue-white from the strain. As if she were holding a secret tight to the ground. Sister Maria de la Guardia would sigh every time she saw her. "Caramba!" She'd sit down with Mirabella and pry her fingers apart. "You see?" she'd say softly, again and again. "What are you holding on to? Nothing, little one. Nothing. ~ Karen Russell

I may not be the best mom. I may not even get back to being the average mother I once claimed to be. But I'm here. I'm getting back up. I'm not leaving. And I'm the mom God ordained for these fours souls, and therefore I am their best mom. ~ Gillian Marchenko

You've never had a hamburger before?" asks Christine, her eyes wide.
"No," I say. "Is that what it's called?"
"Stiffs eat plain food," Four says, nodding at Christina.
"Why?" she asks.
I shrug. "Extravagance is considered self-indulgent and unnecessary."
She smirks. "No wonder you left."
"Yeah," I say,rolling my eyes. "It was just because of the food."
The corner of Four's mouth twitches. ~ Veronica Roth

By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book. ~ John Vaillant

The indignity of it!-
With everything blooming above me,
Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses,
Whole fields lovely and inviolate,-
Me down in the fetor of weeds,
Crawling on all fours,
Alive, in a slippery grave. ~ Theodore Roethke

Did your brother make it?" Uriah says.
"Yeah." Finally I see Tobias, his hand gripping Caleb's arm, coming toward us.
"Not sure why an Erudite like you can't get it through his head," Tobias is saying, "but you aren't going to be able to outrun me."
"He's right," says Uriah. "Four's fast. Not as fast as me, but definitely faster than a Nose like you."
Christina laughs. "A what?"
"Nose." Uriah touches the side of his nose. "It's a play on words. 'Knows' with a 'K,' knowledge, Erudite…get it? It's like Stiff."
"The Dauntless have the weirdest slang. Pansycake, Nose…is there a term for the Candor?"
"Of course." Uriah grins. "Jerks."
Christina shoves Uriah, hard, making him drop the flashlight. Tobias, laughing, leads us to the rest of the group, standing a few feet away. ~ Veronica Roth

I read about Queen Nzinga who ruled in Central Africa in the 16th century resisting the Portuguese. I read about her negotiating with the Dutch. When the Dutch Ambassador tried to humiliate her by refusing her a seat Nzinga had shown her power by ordering one of her advisers to all fours to make a human chair of her body. That was the kind of power I saw. and the story of our own royalty became for me a weapon. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Stay back,"I warned. "Stay away from him." They kept coming. "Stay back!" I yelled. They stopped. Except for one. "Rose," came a soft voice. "Drop the sword." My hands shook. I swallowed. "Get away from us." "Rose." The voice spoke again, a voice that my soul would have known anywhere. Hesitantly, I let myself finally become aware of my surroundings, let the details sink in. I let my eyes focus on the features of the man standing there. Dimitri's brown eyes, gentle and firm, looking down on me. "It's okay," he said. "Everything's going to be okay. You can let go of the sword." My hands shook even harder as I fought to hold on to the hilt. "I can't." The words hurt coming out. "I can't leave him alone. I have to protect him." " you have," said Dimitri. The sword fell out of my hands, landing with a clatter on the wooden floor. I followed, collapsing on all fours, anything to cry but unable to. Dimitri's arms wrapped around me as he helped me up. Voices swarmed around us, and one by one, I recognised people I knew and trusted. ~ Richelle Mead

The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rainforest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do - the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, by some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered fro the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flied into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to th ~ Toni Morrison

In a field where else you found a stack
of revealing nature photographs, of supernude nature
photographs, split beaver of course nature photographs,
photographs full of 70s bush, nature taking come
from every man from miles around, nature with come back
to me just dripping from her lips. The stack came
up to your eye, you saw: nature is big into bloodplay,
nature is into extreme age play, nature does wild inter-
racial, nature she wants you to pee in her mouth, nature
is dead and nature is sleeping and still nature is on all fours,
a horse it fucks nature to death up in Oregon, nature is hot
young amateur redheads, the foxes are all in their holes
for the night, nature is hot old used-up cougars, nature
makes gaping fake-agony faces, nature is consensual dad-
on-daughter, nature is completely obsessed with twins,
nature doing specialty and nature doing niche, exotic females
they line up to drip for you, nature getting paddled as hard
as you can paddle her, oh a whitewater rapid with her ass
in the air, high snowy tail on display just everywhere. ~ Patricia Lockwood

Freedom is dangerous. Possibly crawling on all fours might be safer than standing upright, but we like the view better up there. ~ Isabel Paterson

As another stack of two-by-fours landed by her porch, Stella couldn't help but think about how folks had come together when Spoon Man showed up. This time, however, they managed to do a cook-up for a whole house! Nobody had everything, but everybody had something to offer. ~ Sharon M. Draper

Perhaps what I liked far more was the evening. Everything about it thrilled me. Every glance that crossed my own came like a compliment, or like an asking and a promise that simply lingered in midair between me and the world around me. I was electrified - by the chaffing, the irony, the glances, the smiles that seemed pleased I existed, by the buoyant air in the shop that graced everything from the glass door to the petits fours, to the golden ochre spell of plastic glasses filled with scotch whiskey, to Mr. Venga's rolled up sleeves, to the poet himself, down to the spiral staircase where we had congregated with the babe sisters - all seemed to glow with a luster at once spellbound and aroused. ~ Andre Aciman

INTOLERANCE (1916) Griffith's design for this film is to juxtapose fours stories from different periods of history that illustrate 'Love's struggle throughout the ages'. ~ Steven Jay Schneider

this creature moved on all fours. Long, pointed ears lay flat against the monster's head. The long, tapered snout was wrinkled into a snarl, lips pulled back to reveal two rows of razor-sharp fangs. Muscles moved like liquid beneath the layers of coarse, black fur. Terrible clawed feet, each toe ending with a black, curved talon that wrapped around the stairs, splintering the wood. ~ Graeme Reynolds

Four things are destroyed by the other fours: kindness by ingratitude, strength (of government) by crime, power by power and human love by arrogance. ~ Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

A boy cannot begin playing ball too early. I might almost say that while he is still creeping on all fours he should have a bouncing rubber ball. ~ Christy Mathewson

And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats. ~ Roberto Bolano

I saw Four, Brandon's Garde, poking his head out from behind Brandon's back. He shyly put his hand out for Nine to take, inviting him to walk to pre-combat together. Seeing this, I hoped Nine would take Four's hand. It was a sweet gesture. ~ Pittacus Lore

I've lived as a savage for years. I've lived an existence more animal than human. That's the way I want to take you." His eyes clamped closed as I stroked him. "I want to throw you onto all fours, shove between your legs, and fuck you until you can't walk. I want to come inside you until I can't come anymore and every last seed in my body is swimming in yours. I want to mate with you. I want to breed you. I want to mount you and make you scream my name while I take your body again, and again" - something dark flashed in his eyes when they opened, his cock throbbing in my hand - "and again. ~ Kat Austen

Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? ~ H.G.Wells

Angela had done a marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks - even on the ceiling, though don't ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched on all fours, cleaning up the puke at the homecoming dance in my best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours, too, doing exactly the same thing. ~ Nicholas Sparks

There were two chairs, but there were three of us. So, being the gentleman I am, I got down on the ground on all fours in my chair pose so that then there were three chairs and three of us - with one extra seat to spare. I make love the same way - with more orgasms than people involved. ~ Jarod Kintz

He trotted down the hallway on all fours and started in on his second favorite pastime, conversations with plumbing. Just what I needed: Stone, the Toilet Whisperer. ~ Devon Monk

Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petit fours melting under the July sun. ~ Libba Bray

The old geezer was eighty, he'd been horseback riding only last year ... now he had a different sport, he went down on all fours and the kids rode him ... "giddyap, horsie!" they whipped him with his riding whip! ... till the blood came! ... he loved it! ... all around his study! faster! faster! ... los! ... into the next room ... "witches! witches!" he yelled at them, with his bare old ass! ... ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

As my mind dwells on the depths I have already sunk into since my arrival less than an hour ago, I approach Shaw's feet and legs. Unsure of how to proceed, but sure that looking up at him is not an acceptable response, I wait on all fours in front of him, like an untrained animal. I squirm at the prospect that he may be making the same comparison.
The hushed and excitable voices of the other men perforate the air around us as Shaw reaches down towards me. I see his left hand in my line of vision and one finger gently moves my face upwards to look at him. I gaze up at him and in this moment I want him more than I have ever wanted any man. I want him to seduce me. I want him to conquer me. I want to be devoured. ~ Felicity Brandon

Twenty-fours hours of sleeplessness had made her, in my eyes, anyway, and idealized representation of compassionate, long-suffering women of all ages everywhere. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless. ~ Norton Juster

Don't kill me,' said the knight. 'I yield. I yield. You can't kill a man at mercy.'

Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

'Get up,' he said. 'I won't hurt you. Get up, go.'

The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up, crouching uncertainly.

Lancelot went away and was sick. ~ T.H. White

We are gathered here, friends," he said, "to honor lo Hoon-yera
Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya, children dead, all dead, all murdered
in war. It is customary on days like this to call such lost children men.
I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same
war in which lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya died, my
own son died.

"My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child.

"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to
die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they
do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of
patriotic holidays.

"But they are murdered children all the same.

"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the
hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the
day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and
viciousness of all mankind.

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes
and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like
pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and
shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

"I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show we are about
to see - and a thrilling show it really will be . . ."

He looked each of us in the eye, and then he commented very softly, ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's "The Social Contract"] ~ Voltaire

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.
In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is!
In autumn, the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one's heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects.
In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season's mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes. ~ Sei Shonagon

hear him breathing behind me, loud and fast. "Are you all right, Four?"

"Are you human, Tris? Being up this high..." He gulps for air. "It doesn't scare you at all?"

I look over my shoulder at the ground. If I fall now, I will die. But I don't think I will fall. A gust of air presses against my left side, throwing my body weight to the right. I gasp and cling to the rungs, my balance shifting. Four's cold hand clamps around one of my hips, one of his fingers finding a strip of bare skin just under the hem of my T-shirt. He squeezes, steading me and pushing me gently to the left, restoring my balance. Now I can't breathe. I pause, staring at my hands, my mouth dry. I feel the ghost of where his hand was, his fingers long and narrow.

"You okay?" he asks quietly.

"Yes," I say, my voice strained. ~ Veronica Roth

What was the human animal in the midst of the siege? An herbivore that crawled on all fours, browsing on dirty grasses. A predator that hunted alone or in packs. A social animal that spoke of noble art and wound violin strings from the guts of dead sheep and pigs. A creature with canine teeth for tearing, but with a tongue for speaking. A mouth that could devour or sing. ~ M.T. Anderson

Really? I thought the transfers will go through Four's landscape," says Uriah.
"Like he would let anyone do that," she says, snorting.
Something inside me gets warm and soft. He let me go through it. ~ Veronica Roth

I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours. ~ Horace Walpole

He rose up over her, intending to enter he when she suddenly sat up and shoved at his shoulders. He fell onto his back with a grunt. Shara was on all fours, her hair tousled, as she crawled toward him.
In all his millennia of life, he had never seen anything so sexy. His cock twitched, and her gaze lowered to his engorged arousal. ~ Donna Grant

That wasn't necessary," Benix told Kestrel.
"It was," she said. "He's tiresome. I don't mind taking his money, but I cannot take his company."
"You couldn't spare a thought for me before chasing him away? Maybe I would like a chance to win his gold."
"Lord Irex can spare it," Ronan added.
"Well, I don't like poor losers," said Kestrel. "That's why I play with you two."
Benix groaned.
"She's a fiend," Ronan agreed cheerfully.
"Then why do you play with her?"
"I enjoy losing to Kestrel. I will give anything she will take."
"While I live in hope to one day win," Benix said, and gave Kestrel's hand a friendly pat.
"Yes, yes," Kestrel said. "You are both fine flatterers. Now ante up."
"We lack a fourth player," Benix pointed out. Bite and Sting was played in pairs or fours.
Despite herself, Kestrel looked at Arin standing not too far away, considering the garden or the house beyond it. From his position he would have had a view of Irex's tiles, and Ronan's. He would not, however, have been able to see hers. She wondered what he had made of the game--if he had bothered to follow it.
Perhaps feeling her gaze on him, Arin glanced her way. His eyes were calm, uninterested. She could read nothing in them.
"I suppose our game is over then," she told the two lords in a bright voice. "Shall we join the others?"
Ronan poured the gold into her purse and slipped its velvet strap over her wrist, unnecessarily fiddling ~ Marie Rutkoski

Well," Paul said. "Hit a stiff hand against the dealer's seven through ace. Hit soft eighteen against the dealer's nine or ten. Stand on soft nineteen or above. Double on eleven and on ten against the dealer's two through nine. Split pairs of aces and eights, never split tens, fives, or fours. Split twos through sevens against the dealer's two through seven. Split pairs of nines against the dealer's ~ Perri O'Shaughnessy

Jude wondered if the chip was smart enough to tell the difference between a dog and a naked psychotic scrambling around on all fours with a knife in his teeth. ~ Joe Hill

Animals travel on all fours. Mankind on two. Motorcycling is not a means of transport but an ideology, a nomadic way of life. ~ Amit Reddy

There are some closed doors we're so frightened of opening that we don't see them any more. We've pushed furniture in front of them; we've jammed the lock. Children are the only ones who might crouch down on all fours to stare at the red glow coming from under the door, as they wonder what lies behind it. But Vango had always been afraid of the glow. ~ Timothee De Fombelle

When you look at the clouds they are not symmetrical. They do not form fours and they do not come along in cubes, but you know at once that they are not a mess. [...] They are wiggly but in a way, orderly, although it is difficult for us to describe that kind of order. Now, take a look at yourselves. You are all wiggly. [...] We are just like clouds, rocks and stars. Look at the way the stars are arranged. Do you criticize the way the stars are arranged? ~ Alan W. Watts

Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their faces on fire. ~ Samuel Beckett

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence. ~ Richard Dawkins

There is an island where former versions of myself gallop around on all fours. ~ Chelsea Hodson

You go through one of the instructors' landscapes. My brother told me."
"Ooh,which instructor?" says Christina, suddenly perking up.
"You know, it really isn't fair that you all get insider information and we don't," Will says, glaring at Uriah.
"Like you wouldn't use an advantage if you had one," retorts Uriah.
Christina ignores them. "I hope it's Four's landscape."
"Why?" I ask. The question comes out too incredulous. I bite my lip and wish I could take it back.
"Looks like someone had a mood swing." She rolls her eyes. "Like you don't want to know what his fears are. He acts so tough that he's probably afraid of marshmellows and really bright sunrises or something. Overcompensating."
I shake my head. "It won't be him."
"How would you know?"
"It's just a prediction."
I remember Tobias's father in his fear landscape. He wouldn't let everyone see that.I glance at him. For a second, his eyes shift to mine. His stare is unfeeling.Then he looks away. ~ Veronica Roth

Survive
...
Some women survive
by creating walls,
big walls guarding their hearts
and you say
"let them in"
but
she has been covered in regrets,
crawled on all fours for her salvation.
Dont curse them
for when her attacker came
there she was, loving, now
she has built her walls
brick by brick
guarding against parasites
Don't blame her
Some women are broken,
not ready to be healed,
some women are broken
not ready for love
and that's all right.
Let her find herself
Let her become her own sun
Let her ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us. ~ Nelson Rodrigues

Camilla Figg was already there, crawling across the floor very slowly on all fours on the right side of the room and avoiding the left side altogether. That was a very good idea, because the left side of the room was so spattered with blood that it looked like a large animal had exploded. The blood glistened, still moist, and I felt a twitch of unhappiness that there could be so much of the awful stuff. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Mikhail didn't flinch away from the blade. His black eyes snapped open, blazing with power. Slovensky fell backward, scrambling away on all fours to crouch against the far wall. Fumbling in his coat, he jerked out the gun and held it pointed at Mikhail.
The ground rolled almost gently, seemed to swell so that the concrete floor bulged, then cracked. Slovensky grabbed for the wall behind him to steady himself and lost the gun in the process. Above his head a rock fell from the wall, bounced dangerously close, and rolled to a halt beside him. A second rock, and a third, fell, so that Slovensky had to cover his head as the rocks rained down in a roaring shower.
Slovensky's cry of fear was high and thin. He made himself even smaller, peering through his fingers at the Carpathian. Mikhail had not moved to protect himself. He lay exactly as Slovensky had positioned him, those dark eyes, two black holes, windows to hell, staring at him. Swearing, Slovensky tried to lunge for the gun.
The floor bucked and heaved under him, sending the gun skittering out of reach. A second wall swayed precariously, and rocks cascaded down, striking the man about the head and shoulders, driving him to the floor. He watched a curious, frightening pattern form. Not one rock touched the priest's body. Not one came close to Mikhail. The Carpathian simply watched him with those damn eyes and that faint mocking smile as the rocks buried Slovensky's legs, then fell on his back. There was an ~ Christine Feehan

Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised ~ James Thurber

Drop onto all fours and crawl the length of the court or field, as if you were climbing a wall. This prepares you, too, for light cat burgling, should your athletic career flag. ~ Gretchen Reynolds

From the three, you then use one to make eight ones. You add those ones to the three, and you get one-three base eight, or, in other words, In base ten you have eleven, and you take away seven. And seven from eleven is four. Now go back to the sixty-fours, you're left with two. ~ Tom Lehrer

I cannot actually see him, but there he is in my mind's eye, crouching or down on all fours, on a hillock, black clouds racing past over his head, and the hillock becomes a hill and the next minute it is the atrium of a church, an atrium as black as the clouds, charged with electricity like the clouds, and glistening with moisture or blood, and the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry. The curfew was in force. ~ Roberto Bolano

When a doting person gets down on all fours and plays with the dog's rubber mouse, it only confuses the puppy and gives him a sense of insecurity. He gets the impression that the world is unstable and wonders whether he is supposed to walk on his hind legs and smoke cigars. ~ Corey Ford

Oh, so does that mean I'm in trouble? Should I lift my skirt and get on all fours?" I asked, teasingly. ~ Lilly Wilde

Miaow

Consider me.
I sit here like Tiberius,
inscrutable and grand.
I will let "I dare not"
wait upon "I would"
and bear the twangling
of your small guitar
because you are my owl
and foster me with milk.
Why wet my paw?
Just keep me in a bag
and no one knows the truth.
I am familiar with witches
and stand a better chance in hell than you
for I can dance on hot bricks,
leap your height
and land on all fours.
I am the servant of the Living God.
I worship in my way.
Look into these slit green stones
and follow your reflected lights
into the dark.

Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew.
You don't play with me.
I play with you. ~ Mark Haddon

The only intelligent way to discuss politics is
on all fours. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

I tend to eat things in fours. I'll eat four nuts, four grapes, four chips at a time. I don't know why. It's not really a superstition. I don't think anything bad will happen if I don't, but three potato chips doesn't seem right. ~ Jimmy Wales

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use. ~ John Denham

Here's how adaptation works - almost everything in the movie is in the book in some form. But it's as though the deck has been completely reshuffled and some of the cards have been assigned different values, some of the fours have been made into jacks, and some of the jacks have been made into twos. ~ Walter Kirn

Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours and fives, these being like auto-teams, for being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big nightwar, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers. ~ Anthony Burgess

Because there are no fours. ~ Antoine Walker

That's the Staatsoper," says Neumann Two one night. The facade of a grand building rises gracefully, pilastered and crenelated. Stately wings soar on either side, somehow both heavy and light. It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world - what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them? When Russian prisoners are chained by threes and fours to fences while German privates tuck live grenades in their pockets and run? Opera ~ Anthony Doerr

I want to drop to all fours and bay like a wild thing drunk on being hungry and strong, a beast that could fuck for days without cease if I could only find someone that could take it as hard and long a I can give it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Look."
The others seemed confused. Then the glow became brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.
A boy in the crowd gasped. "She's a communist!"
A girl who'd been sitting at Cabin Four's table gave him a disgusted sneer. "No, Damien, that's my mom's symbol." Her face went slack as the truth sank in. "Uh, which means ... it's her mom's symbol. ~ Rick Riordan

Well, you didn't think I'd just roll over, did you?"
"Actually I was hoping for an on-all-fours sort of thing. ~ G.A. Aiken

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work. ~ Voltaire

When the Dutch ambassador tried to humiliate her by refusing her a seat, Nzinga had shown her power by ordering one of her advisers to all fours to make a human chair of her body. That was the kind of power I sought ... ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I let go and dropped on all fours ... as quiet as a cat. Actually I landed on a cat. It screeched and howled then shot away. So much for stealth! ~ Anthony Horowitz

Curran lunged through the window
He was huge, neither a man, nor a lion. Curran's usual warrior form stood upright. This creature moved on all fours. Enormous, bulging with muscle under a gray pelt striped with whip marks of darker gray, six hundred pounds at least. His head was lion, his eyes were human, and his fangs were monster.
So that's what the Beast Lord with no brakes looked like.
He landed on the floor of my living room. Muscles twisted and crawled, stretching and snapping. The gray fur melted, fading into human skin, and Curran stood on my carpet, nude and pissed off, his eyes glowing gold.
His voice was a deep snarl. "I know he's here. I can smell him."
I felt an irresistible urge to brain him with something heavy. "Did you lose your sense of smell? Saiman's scent is two hours old."
Golden eyes burned me. "Where is he?"
"Under my bed."
The bed went airborne. It flew across the living room and slammed into the wall with a thud.
That was just about enough of that. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Saving you from whatever mess you got yourself into this time."
Why me? "There is no mess! It's a professional arrangement."
"He's paying you?" Curran snarled.
"No. I'm paying him."
He roared. His mouth was human, but the blast of sound that shot out of it was like thunder.
"Ran out of words, Your Majesty?"
"Why him?" he growled. "Of all the men you could have, why would you hire him ~ Ilona Andrews

Is everyone with one face called a Milo?"
"Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things."
"How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless."
"I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted.
"Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise. ~ Norton Juster

Referring to the church as a building is like referring to people as two-by-fours. ~ Don Everts

Getting down on all fours and imitating a rhinoceros stops babies from crying. (Put an empty cigarette pack on your nose for a horn and make loud "snort" noises.) I don't know why parents don't do this more often. Usually it makes the kid laugh. Sometimes it sends him into shock. Either way it quiets him down. If you're a parent, acting like a rhino has another advantage. Keep it up until the kid is a teenager and he definitely won't have his friends hanging around your house all the time. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Wind in a Box"

- after Lorca

I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket
of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice.
I want to learn to walk without blinking.

I want to outlive the turtle and the turtle's father,
the stone. I want a mouth full of permissions

and a pink glistening bud. If the wildflower and ant hill
can return after sleeping each season, I want to walk
out of this house wearing nothing but wind.

I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you
weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts

of gray lighting the alcoves and winding paths
of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings
of snow. I want to fight off the wind.

I want to be the wind and I want to fight off the wind
with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging

screen doors, its gilded boxes, and neatly folded pamphlets
of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines
of two by fours and endings, your disapprovals,

your doubts and regulations, your carbon copies.
If the locust can abandon its suit,

I want a brand new name. I want the pepper's fury
and the salt's tenderness. I want the virtue
of the evening rain, but not its gossip.

I want the moon's intuition, but not its questions.
I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter

every r ~ Terrance Hayes

The the glow become brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.
A boy in the crowd gasped. 'She's a communist!'
A girl who'd been sitting at Cabin Four's table gave him a disgusted sneer. 'No, Damien, that's my mom's symbol. ~ Rick Riordan

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way. ~ Miles Davis

There are some real positives for Wales. Their back four's not bad, sometimes. ~ Iain Dowie

The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim. ~ Georges Hebert

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours ... When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle. ~ Rafael Eitan