Nine Quotes

He wondered for an idle moment if he'd ever see her again, but it didn't look likely. You have to be realistic, after all, and getting through tomorrow seemed like quite the ambition. ~ Joe Abercrombie

The End of World War One
Out of the scraped surface of the land
men began to emerge, like puppies
from the slit of their dam. Up from the trenches
they came out upon the pitted, raw earth
wobbling as if new-born.
They could not believe they would be allowed to live,
the orders had come down: no more killing.
They approached the enemy, holding out chocolate
and cigarettes. They shook hands, exchanged
souvenirs
mess-kits, neckerchiefs.
Some even embraced, while in London
total strangers copulated
in doorways and on the pavement, in the ecstasy
of being reprieved. Nine months later,
like men emerging from the trenches, first the head,
then the body, there were lifted, newborn, from these mothers,
the soldiers of World War Two. ~ Sharon Olds

I'll be back tomorrow," he said, "at nine o'clock. Don't open your door to anyone else."
"Not even my balcony door?"
"Especially not your balcony door. ~ Anne Fortier

I was proud of myself coming down that back-nine ~ Graeme McDowell

I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers. ~ Leo Kottke

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible. ~ Alex Tizon

Spending the next nine hours with a crying woman wal real close to the top of his "Avoid at All Costs" list right under untimely death and a desk job. ~ Tara Janzen

Zoe is survived by her husband, Charles, and her daughter, Juliet.

Survived. This guy is right. The words we use to surround death are bizarre. Like we're hiding something.

I guess the obituary wouldn't read right if it said something like, Zoe died on the way home from the airport, after nine months on assignment in a war zone, leaving her husband, Charles, and her daughter, Juliet, with a Welcome Home cake that would sit in the refrigerator for a month before either of them could bear to throw it away.

So maybe we are hiding something. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

TWENTY SMALL GRAVES

There was a woman who bore a child almost every year, but the children never lived longer

than six months. Usually after three or four months they would die. She grieved long and

publicly. "I take on the work of pregnancy for nine months, but the joy vanishes quicker

than a rainbow." Twenty children went like that, in fevers to their small graves. One night

she had a revelation. She saw the place of unconditional love, call it the garden or source

of gardens. The physical eye cannot see its unseeable light. Lamp, green flower, these

are just comparisons, so that some of the love-bewildered may catch a fragrance. The woman

saw pure grace and, drunk with the seeing, fell to the ground. Those who have the vision said

then, "This morning meal is for those who rise with sincere devotion. The tragedies you've

had came from other times when you did not take refuge." "Lord, give me more grief.

Tear me to pieces, if it leads here." She said this and walked into the presence

she had seen. Her children were all there, "Lost to me," she cried, "but not to you."

Without this great grieving no one can enter the spirit. ~ Rumi

William untucked the covers and stood, making a mental list of everything he'd need for the coming trip. A few blades, serrated and non serrated. A vial of acid. A bone saw. A spiked paddle. A cat-o'-nine-tails. And a bag of Gummy Bears. ~ Gena Showalter

I knew Jimmy Dean. He tested for 'Battle Cry'. Paul Newman tested for 'Battle Cry'. I did nine tests to finally get that role. ~ Tab Hunter

When you're pregnant, people feel like they can come up and give you unsolicited advice. When I was nine months pregnant, this one woman came up and she said, I have one word for you: epidural. And I was like, Oh my God, thanks. But we already picked a name. ~ Bonnie McFarlane

We're just like you,' the other tiger said. 'We speak the same language you do. We think the same thought. But we're tigers.'
'You could help me with arithmetic,' I said.
'What's that?' one of the tigers said.
'My arithmetic.'
'Oh, your arithmetic.'
'Yeah.'
'What do you want to know?' one of the tigers said.
'What's nine times nine?'
'Eighty-one,' a tiger said.
'What's eight times eight?'
'Fifty-six,' a tiger said.
I asked them half of dozen other questions: six times six, seven times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic. Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to go away.
'OK,' I said. 'I'll go outside.'
'Don't go too far,' one of the tigers said. 'We don't want anyone to come up here and kill us.'
'OK.'
They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside and sat down by the river. 'I'm an orphan,' I said. ~ Richard Brautigan

Conspiracies existed, to be sure; many of them, and many were dark indeed. But fiendish? Fiendishness required brains. Nine times out of ten, conspirators behaved like buffoons and wound up exposing themselves out of sheer, bumbling incompetence. ~ Eric Flint

Philosophy has become the shadow of itself over the years. Nine parts history and one part reflection on history. It has been ages since anything original came forth in the field. All the good thinking has already been done. Nowadays, philosophers are mostly institutionalized academics - like me - focused more on the politics of tenure than on philosophizing. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

I'm a professional bodyguard. (Leta)
Yeah, right. (Aiden)
Nope. All true. I know seventy-two ways to kill a man and sixty-nine of them look like an accident. (Leta) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In one typical battalion, of forty-one officers who had landed on Sicily in July, only nine remained, and six of them had been wounded, according ~ Rick Atkinson

It would take a human nine years to walk from the Earth to the moon. ~ Warren Ellis

I spent two weeks prancing around a studio in Queens in my underwear with nine other guys. They were long days. But what the hell, it was Calvin Klein. ~ Michael Bergin

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. ~ H.L. Mencken

I was blessed with suck in the form of the traditional Snow White coloring: skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as coal. In the cartoons and the storybooks, they make it look almost cute. Of course, when artists and animators design a Snow White, they essentially give their incarnation of my story a spray tan and some neutral lip liner. A true seven-oh-nine was nowhere near as marketable as those animated darlings. We're too pale, and our lips are too red, and we look like something out of a horror movie that didn't have the decency to stay on the screen. ~ Seanan McGuire

My brother is nine years older than I am. He's a psychology professor, I'm an actor, and so we look at life in two different ways. We thought it would be interesting to come together and take our unique perspectives and share them with everybody else. ~ Matt Czuchry

By the age of nine or ten, I knew that I loved history and writing. It got hold of me and never turned loose. ~ Hampton Sides

Be gentle with me, new love. Treat me tenderly. I need the gentle touch, the soft voice, the candlelight after nine. There's been so many who didn't understand so give me all the love I see in your timid eyes but give it gently Please. ~ Rod McKuen

It takes nine tailors to make a man. ~ John Heywood

I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. "Once you've seen a child born, you realize a baby's not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months. ~ Lorrie Moore

Bayaz chuckled. "The Bloody-Nine, scared of shadows? I'd never have believed it." "Every shadow's cast by something," growled the Northman, ~ Joe Abercrombie

He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills. ~ Robin McKinley

Yet there was one problem: at the age of nine-and-ten, Laenor preferred the company of squires of his own age, and was said never to have known a woman intimately, nor to have any bastards. But to this, Grand Maester Mellos was said to have remarked, What of it? I am not fond of fish, but when fish is served, I eat it. ~ George R R Martin

It gets kinda monotonous, but that's television. There are plus sides and down sides. The positive side is that you have steady work for nine months of the year for however many years your show is on TV,. ~ Alexis Bledel

Once we acquired the power to destroy ourselves, the very notion of human life had been altered; even the air we breathed was contaminated with the stench of death. Sachs was hardly the first person to come up with this idea, but considering what happened to him nine days ago, there's a certain eeriness to the obsession, as if it were a kind of deadly pun, a mixed-up word that took root inside him and proliferated beyond his control. ~ Paul Auster

When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years. ~ J.D. Salinger

You're going to feel good. But no matter how much you rehab you do, you can't speed up the healing process. I would rather see a guy come back in 14 months and pitch seven, eight or nine more years then come back in 10 months and get hurt again. You cannot mess with mother nature and father time. Nature will heal it if you give it time. ~ Tommy John

It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction fac ~ Rick Riordan

It would only take one dummy to kill us all, and we had four hundred and ninety-nine to spare. ~ Jim Butcher

The giant's blue left arm uncoiled from the Bloody-Nine's body, his blue hand seized hold of the Bloody-Nine's wrist, but there could be no stopping it. When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared's twitching mouth. The blade crept onwards, slowly, slowly, and its very point bit into painted flesh, just below the giant's bottom rib. ~ Joe Abercrombie

To declare war on ninety-nine percent of bacteria when less than percent of them threaten our health makes no sense. Many of the bacteria we're killing are our protectors. ~ Sandor Katz

I was nine minutes late for my last birthday party. And I was nine months on time for my first birthday. ~ Jarod Kintz

My whole world changed when Michael Jackson brought out the Bad album when I was about eight or nine. He took over my whole life and from then on I wanted to be Michael Jackson. I watched his videos for hours and learned how to dance like him. I would push back the chairs in the room and learn his dance moves. I even taught myself to moonwalk. ~ Shane Filan

The amused heat in Lucien eyes scorched her. In that moment she wasn't ordinary Sophie Black, builder's PA and invisible wife. She was sexy and sophisticated Ms. Black, able to stop Viking sex-gods in their tracks with just a few little words. She noticed the way Lucien's throat worked as he swallowed before he spoke.
You start in the morning. Nine o' clock sharp. Don't be late, Ms. Black. ~ Kitty French

Forty years ago my mother died," he said. "She captured by Comanches, nine years old. Love Indian and wild life so well, no want to go back to white folks. All same people anyway, God say. I love my mother. ~ S.C. Gwynne

If God annihilates or deflects or creates a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born ~ C.S. Lewis

Not threatening - warning. I haven't been hunting it this long and gotten this close to let anyone get in my way and fuck things up. There are two kinds of people in this world, Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims." He pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I felt his tongue where my pulse fluttered, tracing my vein. "You, Ms. Lane, are a victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that - if Herodotus can be believed - was unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats. ~ Stacy Schiff

Almost everything else I have done during my adult years has been affected to some extent by my name - by my father's position, if you will. But in the air, I had no name; to the Federal Aviation Agency I was simply Comanche Nine-Nine POP. The quality of my landings, navigation and judgment were mine alone. ~ John Eisenhower

Dom stood dumbfounded as Jane disappeared into the street. Then he hurried to catch up to her, to get some answers.
She knew. How the blazes did she know?
The answer to that was obvious. "So, Nancy told you the truth, did she?" he snapped as he fell into step beside her.
Jane didn't reply, just kept marching toward the inn like a Hussar bent on battle.
"When?" he demanded. "How long have you known?"
"For nine years, you…you conniving…lying--"
"Nine years? You knew all this time, and you didn't say anything?"
"Say anything!" She halted just short of the innyard entrance to glare at him. "How the devil was I to do that? You disappeared into the streets of London as surely as if you were a footpad or a pickpocket."
She planted her hands on her hips. "Oh, I read about your heroic exploits from time to time, but other than that, I neither heard nor saw anything of you until last year, when you showed up at George's town house. It was only pure chance that I happened to be at dinner with Nancy that day. As you'll recall, you didn't stay long. Nor did you behave as if you would welcome any confidences."
Remembering the cool reception he'd given her, he glanced away, unable to bear the accusation in her eyes. "No, I suppose I didn't."
"Besides," she said, "it hardly mattered that I knew the truth. I assumed that if you ever changed your mind about making a life with me, you would seek me out. Since you never did, you were clearly dete ~ Sabrina Jeffries

People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her. ~ Marlon James

I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I'm in favor of the music industry ... standing up proud and saying it out loud: We in the Chiclet-manufacturing business are not about social justice, ... we're not about a coherent set of national ideals, we're not about wisdom. We're about choosing what WE want to listen to and ignoring everything else ... . We're about giving ourselves a mindless feel-good treat every five minutes. ... We're about persuading ten-year-old children to spend twenty-five dollars on a cool little silicone iPod case that costs a licensed Apple Computer subsidiary thirty-nine cents to manufacture. ~ Jonathan Franzen

There was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine. ~ Miriam Toews

... out here in the real world, my man, you would be amazed how seldom murder has to break into people's lives. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it gets there because they open the door and invite it in. ~ Tana French

One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

"You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark," you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

Walk into the light. ~ Michelle McNamara

Seven...eight...nine...
Some in the crowd shuffled for positions where they could have a better view. By now it was close to four o'clock, and the sun was setting slightly in the west. What that morning had been close to zero weather was now in the mid-forties. The dueling field, which had been sparkling with the morning frost was now dry. ~ William Roy Pipes

Thought he had it all before they called his bluff
Found out that his skin just wasn't thick enough
Wanted to go back to how it was before
Thought he lost everything
Then he lost a whole lot more ~ Nine Inch Nails

It is because the critics are not detached that they do not see this detachment; it is because they are not looking at things in a dry light that they cannot see the difference between black and white. It is because they are in a particular mood of reaction and revolt that they have a motive for making out that all the white is dirty grey and the black not so black as it is painted. I do not say there are not human excuses for their revolt; I do not say it is not in some ways sympathetic; what I say is that it is not in any way scientific. An iconoclast may be indignant; an iconoclast may be justly indignant; but an iconoclast is not impartial. And it is stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope? ~ G.K. Chesterton

Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrongs no more. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Why do adults have to diminish everything by feeling they need to end meetings with a false positive? It's so selfish. They say it not because they believe it, but because it helps them feel some kind of accomplishment when they walk away. Like they've done their job. But what do they leave behind?
It's like when teachers tell Tyler that he should be a lawyer because he's good at arguing, but meanwhile he can't pass grade nine. No one wants to say he's stupid, or that he's probably going to end up in jail like his brother, so they fill his head with these stupid dreams until he's eighteen, with no credits and totally messed up for life. I say, tell the truth, squash the dream, and stop with the second chances. ~ Lesley Anne Cowan

...the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has to do next. In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and one's life may cease to be one's own. One may take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock, and meditate the whole time on the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine, and that one must not be late.
And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's programme will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much, from filling one's programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt less. ~ Arnold Bennett

The Cubs are gonna shine in sixty-nine. ~ Ernie Banks

I've got nine dogs, eight birds, turtles, fish and I had wallabies at one point. ~ Gloria Estefan

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle, and the causal, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought they were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist. ~ Ramana Maharshi

I might have been your zygote. Your fetus. Maybe even your off-spring. But I have never been your son. You have no idea what it means to be a real mother. You think nine months of discomfort and eight hours of labor gives you the right to call yourself 'Mom'? Well, bitch, you're delusional. ~ Ellen Hopkins

It took me until I was nine to realise he was letting me win. I just thought I had a very fast pony. ~ C.S. Pacat

He most effective lie is ninety-nine percent true. ~ Robert Ferrigno

I know you, you believe that God tests people and you have to have faith that things are going according to His plan.."
"God is not in my bedroom." That was just nine kinds of wrong. ~ James Buchanan

Is not it interesting that you had everything you needed in the first nine months, why is not that true for the next ninety years, because we interfere. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Nine people had died today. And it didn't matter what the FBI had thought of her actions. Her career as a negotiator had ended before it had even begun. ~ Elizabeth Heiter

I make fractals. They're like mathematical pictures. My stepdad is actually a rocket scientist, so in his free time, he gave me a fractal program for fun. He showed me how to use it when I was about nine or 10, and I made thousands of fractals. ~ Ronda Rousey

Arleen thanked Pana. Getting off the phone, she thanked Jesus. She smiled. When she smiled she looked like a different person. The press had loosened its grip. From landlords, she had heard eighty-nine nos but one yes.

Jori accepted his mother's high five. He and his brother would have to switch schools. Jori didn't care. He switched schools all the time. Between seventh and eighth grades, he had attended five different schools - when he went at all. At the domestic-violence shelter alone, Jori had racked up seventeen consecutive absences. Arleen saw school as a higher-order need, something to worry about after she found a house. ~ Matthew Desmond

Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nine and a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenue most. Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Look in Kego's defense he was only Nine and a half when he took command of the ship and she had been put way off course by her captain and you lot would all be dead if it wasn't for him.
Jenny Smith In The Navigator by Steve Merrick ~ Steve Merrick

If she had been in charge of designing the human race she would have gone about things differently. (A golden shaft of light through the ear for conception perhaps and a well-fitting hatch somewhere modest for escape nine months later.) ~ Kate Atkinson

The Savior of all mankind left the ninety and nine to find the one lost. That one who was lost need not have become lost. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

A few years have gone and come around when we were sittin' at our favorite spot in town and you looked at me, got down on one knee. Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle; the whole town came and our mammas cried. And you said "I do.", and I did, too. Take me home where we met so many years before; we'll rock our babies on the very front porch. After all this time, you and I. And I'll be eighty-seven you'll be eighty-nine, I'll still look at you like the stars that shine. In the sky. Oh, my my my. ~ Taylor Swift

Ninety-nine percent of singing is listening and hearing, and so then 1 percent of it is singing. ~ Linda Ronstadt

The battle proved a victory - at least in part - and soon after, his grandfather finally died, and Ser Elmo became Lord of Riverrun. But he did not long enjoy his station; he died on the march forty-nine days later, leaving his young son, Ser Kermit, to succeed him. ~ George R R Martin

The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has seized him. If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. The combination is a dreadful one. At nine o'clock I visited ~ Bram Stoker

The record changer clicked; another record dropped down. In the sudden, brief silence, she heard something within her turn over. Perhaps only her soul.
It was nine-fifteen. ~ Stephen King

I spent an hour getting ready for work, an hour travelling to work, nine hours at work, and an hour travelling home. By the time I got back, I'd be so tired that I'd just eat my dinner, watch some dumbed-down television and browse the internet. I'd fall asleep. Then I'd wake up and repeat the whole process again the next day. Living ~ Joss Sheldon

I'd read somewhere that nine out of ten adults in Alaska had a drinking problem. I could believe it. Snow, ice, sleet, wind, the dark night of the soul: what else were you supposed to do? ~ T.C. Boyle

I, of course, owe everything to my mother, because my father died when I was only nine days of age; and the marvelous teachings, the faith, the integrity of my mother have been an inspiration to me. ~ Heber J. Grant

Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares. ~ Charles Yu

Severe isn't a word normally associated with a cold. Severe is for weather or third-degree burns ... No one responds 'severe' when someone asks how her cold is.
In fact, nine out of ten Americans respond to 'How's your cold' with 'It sucks.' So there should be an It Sucks cold formula. ~ Celia Rivenbark

Thirty-nine was the best year of my life earnings-wise. I paid off my mortgage and felt a massive sense of achievement. ~ Nicki Chapman

Over and over again-in the movie, I have nine different people who have worked for Fox News network who have come forward and talked on camera, three of them anonymously, by the way. ~ Robert Greenwald

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo. ~ Jack Nicholson

I spoke to you all of the Wheel," he said quietly. "The Wheel turns and unless we are alert an opportunity is snatched or taken, for us or against us. In a place, which you shall see, the Nine have preserved for centuries a truth - knowledge of a truth, that is; for truth is like skill, unless used constantly it disappears. The time will come, but is not yet, when that truth may be given to the world with safety. Those in whose hands the ancient secrets are, being human, have made mistakes. Knowledge in the hands of criminals and fools is worse than ignorance. ~ Talbot Mundy

I've worked over four dozen nine-to-five jobs before taking the chance to chase my dream of wanting to become an actor and filmmaker. Growing up in Brooklyn and Harlem, working at jobs like the bus company were great. I had benefits, a great salary, and security. But it wasn't my dream. ~ Malcolm Goodwin

At nine, my mom used to tell me she saw an Olympic medalist in me. I used to take it as a joke, but she was very serious. ~ Saina Nehwal

When I was nine, I had this girlfriend and we used to have running races in the park. I wanted to be like Superman and fly in and rescue her. ~ Orlando Bloom

Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent. ~ Susan Cain

The compartment built to 'seat 8 passengers; 4 British Troops, or 6 Indian Troops' now carried only nine. ~ R.K. Narayan

Nine-nine of every hundred among you probably desire peace, while the balance may hold war a condition to be preferred; but what can be the mental norm of statesmanship where such a minority conquer the peace-lovers? ~ Eden Phillpotts

Goggles but no bathing suit?" she asked.
Daniel blushed. "I guess that was stupid. But I was in a hurry, only thinking about what you would need to get the halo." He drove the paddle back into the water, propelling them more quickly than a speedboat. "You can swim in your underwear, right?"
Now Luce blushed. Under normal circumstances, the question might have seemed thrilling, something they both would have giggled at. Not these nine days. She nodded. Eight days now. Daniel was deadly serious. Luce just swallowed hard and said, "Of course."
The pair of green-gray spires grew larger, more detailed, and then they were upon them. They were tall and conical, made of rusted slats of copper. They had once been capped by small teardrop-shaped copper flags sculpted to look like they were rippling in the wind, but one weathered flag was pocked with holes, and the other had broken off completely. In the open water, the spires' protrusion was bizarre, suggesting a cavernous cathedral of the deep. Luce wondered how long ago the church had sunk, how deep it sat below.
The thought of diving down there in ridiculous goggles and mom-bought underwear made her shudder.
"This church must be huge," she said. She meant I don't think I can do this. I can't breathe underwater. How are we going to find one small halo sunk in the middle of the sea?
"I can take you down as far as the chapel itself, but only that far. So long as you hold on to my hand." Daniel extended a w ~ Lauren Kate

She was especially interested in my day at the hospital but endured my descriptions of all my possessions and the minutiae of my day. I think it was her patience that endeared her to me. How often does a nine-year-old child have such a fascinated audience? In any case, she had listened, and now I found myself face-to-face with her. ~ Daniel O'Malley

He swore to kill her. She could still see his face when he said it.
He was nineteen then. He'd be thirty-nine when released. That was still years away, if there was no early parole. She didn't understand why this had started now, only three years after she was hidden from everyone. ~ Judith-Victoria Douglas

I have pictures of my daughter, in the hospital, at three seconds, six seconds, nine seconds, and then fifteen seconds, 'cause dumbass couldn't get the camera ready fast enough. Yeah, ha ha ha. She wrote that in the photo album. ~ Christopher Titus

There's a reason they say nothing good ever came out of a committee. Beware of Focus Groups, Working Parties, Conference Calls, and people who find ninety-nine reasons to say no before they find a single reason to say yes. It's these people who are responsible for most of the evil in the universe. ~ James Goss