Odd Numbers Quotes

In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of lines using odd numbers of syllables. ~ James Fenton

Jessabelle,
I'm sorry to just leave, but I need some time.
Time to get my head back on straight.
Time to remember who I really am.
Time with my Creator, the one who knew before the foundations of the earth what would happen over the last few days.

I wish more than anything, that I could process all of this with you, go through all of this together, because I'm coming to understand that, out of all the men in the world, God picked me for you. It's so much more than lineage. It's you. How you've come into your own. How you've blossomed and grown. I'm so privileged to see that secret side of you-the side no one else gets to see. The side where you secretly paint your second toenail a different color because everyone else does the fourth one, but you're not sure my mother would approve so you never wear open-toed shoes to show them off. You only eat M&Ms in odd numbers. You use your right hand to put hair behind your ear, but never your left.
You didn't know I knew those things, did you?
I've watched you over the last few months and learned more about you than I realized until I tried to put my thoughts on paper. You're sleeping just feet away from me as I write this. Your even breathing brings some peace to my troubled soul. The small smile on your face makes me wonder what your dreaming about and if, in your sleep, you've managed to find happiness instead of the turmoil life always seems to bring. I have to stop myself ~ Carol Moncado

Round numbers beg to be negotiated, usually by counteroffer round numbers. Odd numbers sound harder, firmer, less negotiable. ~ Mark McCormack

I really like even numbers, and I like heavily divisible numbers. Twelve is my lucky number - I just love how divisible it is. I don't like odd numbers, and I really don't like primes. When I turned 37, I put on a strong face, but I was not looking forward to 37. But 37 turned out to be a pretty amazing year. ~ Marissa Mayer

Good luck lies in odd numbers. ~ William Shakespeare

I count everything. Even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of 10. I count the ticks of the clock i count the tocks of the clock I count the lines between the lines on a sheet of paper. I count the broken beats of my heart I count my pulse and my blinks and the number of tries it takes to inhale enough oxygen for my lungs. I stay like this I stand like this I count like this until the feeling stops. Until the tears stop spilling, until my fists stop shaking, until my heart stops aching. There are never enough numbers. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful? ~ Pliny The Elder

The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies. ~ Lemony Snicket

Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual? ~ Pliny The Elder

They say everything looks better with odd numbers of things. But sometimes I put even numbers - just to upset the critics. ~ Bob Ross

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away; go. They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. ~ William Shakespeare

Parthenon looked to me like an even number two or four. And even numbers are against my heart
I don't want to have anything with them. They stand too fast on their legs, they're well-ordered, they don't wish to be moved, they're conservative, satisfied. All problems solved, all desires fulfilled, they can be calm. Odd numbers, they have a rhythm familiar to my heart. The life of the odd numbers is not comfortably arranged. They don't like the world as it is, they wish to change it, improve it, push it forward. They stand on one leg, and they have the other one raised, prepared to go on. They are leaving. Where? To the next even number, where they stop for a while, breathe in, and go on marching again. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish. ~ Sebastian Coe

That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don't meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn't be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read. ~ Roxane Gay

You Americans so quiet because you Americans don't know anything for real. You know your gas prices, you know your baseball numbers but do you know that no piece of paper can be folded more than seven times? ~ Alison Espach

I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. ~ Pat Summitt

She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing. ~ Kate Atkinson

If someone was to tally the number of human hours wasted in business by people trying to accomplish objectives without being given the authority to do so, we would all be appalled. ~ Laurie Beth Jones

Debugging: what an odd word. As if "bugging" were the job of putting in bugs, and debugging the task of removing them. But no. The job of putting in bugs is called programming. A programmer writes some code and inevitably makes the mistakes that result in the malfunctions called bugs. Then, for some period of time, normally longer than the time it takes to design and write the code in the first place, the programmer tries to remove the mistakes. ~ Ellen Ullman

They could have given me any number. They could have given me number one-hundred one. The number is nothing. I could have played my whole career without a number
on my back, and it still wouldn't have changed the person. ~ Lou Whitaker

I'd mentioned this odd wardrobe choice to Adrian a couple of weeks ago:
"Isn't Dimitri hot?"
Adrian's response hadn't been entirely unexpected:
"Well, yeah, according to most women, at least. ~ Richelle Mead

With the news that he would soon be a daddy again, Steve seemed inspired to work even harder. Our zoo continued to get busier, and we had trouble coping with the large numbers. The biggest draw was the crocodiles. Crowds poured in for the croc shows, filling up all the grandstands. The place was packed.
Steve came up with a monumental plan. He was a big fan of the Colosseum-type arenas of the Roman gladiator days. He sketched out his idea for me on a piece of paper.
"Have a go at this, it's a coliseum," he declared, his eyes wide with excitement. He drew an oval, then a series of smaller ovals in back of it. "Then we have crocodile ponds where the crocs could live. Every day a different croc could come out for the show and swim through a canal system"--he sketched rapidly--"then come out in the main area."
"Canals," I said. "Could you get them to come in on cue?"
"Piece of cake!" he said. "And get this! We call it…the Crocoseum!"
His enthusiasm was contagious. Never mind that nothing like this had ever been done before. Steve was determined to take the excitement and hype of the ancient Roman gladiators and combine it with the need to show people just how awesome crocs really were.
But it was a huge project. There was nothing to compare it to, because nothing even remotely similar had ever been attempted anywhere in the world. I priced it out: The budget to build the arena would have to be somewhere north of eight million dollars, a huge expense. ~ Terri Irwin

Peterson remembered with a smile that the US Department of the Interior had made a thorough prediction of trends in 1937, and had missed atomic energy, computers, radar, antibiotics, and World War II. Yet they all kept on, with this simple-minded linear extrapolation that was, despite a bank of computers to refine the numbers, still merely a new way to be stupid in an expensive fashion. ~ Gregory Benford

If you travel in space for three years and come back, four hundred years will have passed on Earth. I am only an armchair astronomer, but I have the odd sense that I have returned from a journey to a world where nothing quite makes sense. ~ Jodi Picoult

The selective activation of compatible memories explains anchoring: the high and the low numbers activate different sets of ideas in memory. The estimates of annual temperature draw on these biased samples of ideas and are therefore biased as well. ~ Daniel Kahneman

I'm not the number-one guy here ... if it translates to winning, I don't mind taking a step back as far as roles. ~ Pau Gasol

Bryon tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion. ~ Susanna Clarke

There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. ~ Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.
That's what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again.
And just like that, you die. ~ Ruth Ozeki

You must see the change you wish to be in the world. ~ Dr. Robert Jones MD PhD DDS ODD

Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions. ~ Kobo Abe

Since my 'Crown of Midnight' tour in 2013, we've had such a rapid jump in audience numbers that we've had to move to bigger venues, cap events, and find new and creative ways to keep the line flowing while still allowing me the chance to chat with each person, which will always be very, very important to me. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Talk is free," said Odd, "but the wise man chooses when to spend his words." It was something his father used to say. ~ Neil Gaiman

The young compliment their greatness on the number of their friends; the old, on the confidence of them. ~ Norm MacDonald

The heart of democracy is violence, Miss Tagwynn," Esterbrook said. "In order to decide what to do, we take a count of everyone for and against it, and then do whatever the larger side wishes to do. We're having a symbolic battle, its outcome decided by simple numbers. It saves us time and no end of trouble counting actual bodies - but don't mistake it for anything but ritualized violence. And every few years, if the person we elected doesn't do the job we wanted, we vote him out of office - we symbolically behead him and replace him with someone else. Again, without the actual pain and bloodshed, but acting out the ritual of violence nonetheless. It's actually a very practical way of getting things done. ~ Jim Butcher

But beyond these joys, the look and action of numbers, is what they represent. [...] Numbers are an invention of the human mind, and they represent aspects of that mind in ways that are continuously intriguing and often mysterious. [...] What is a calculation but a holding of one constellation of numbers in place while you impact it with another? Such little struggles occur infinitely as we attempt to pin down the elusive elements of existence. ~ P. Carey Reid

When I began working in not-for-profits, it was taking a vow of poverty, which eliminated huge numbers of folks. ~ Geoffrey Canada

I have picked up on the terminology of Brother Lawrence, who called praying unceasingly practicing God's presence. In fact, practicing God's presence has been my number one goal for the last year ~ Beth Moore

I know I'm funny, because I'm eccentric, I'm odd. I'm not what you expect. ~ Marian Seldes

Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city. ~ Toni Morrison

Miri took genuine comfort in studying Mathematics that day. She could sort numbers into two simple ideas: true and not true. Unlike numbers, words were rarely just one thing. They moved and changed, camouflaging and leaping out unexpectedly. Words were slippery and alive; words wrestled out of her grip and became something new. Words were dangerous. ~ Shannon Hale

predecessor of Isaac Newton at Cambridge University, maintained that irrational numbers have no meaning independent of geometric lengths. ~ Morris Kline

As you have fewer and fewer voices in a democracy, in a free society, it's not good to limit the number of voices. ~ Michael Moore

justifies the cost of wounded lives and shattered people. Justice, mercy, integrity, and love are compromised for success. Decisions are based on money, numbers, and results. ~ John Bevere

If we don't accept any common beliefs, we can't exist in spacetime. But when we don't believe in age, at least we don't have to die because our numbers change. [ ... ] When you don't believe in birthdays, the idea of aging turns a little foreign to you. You don't fall into trauma over your sixteenth birthday or your thirtieth or the big Five-Oh or the deadly Century. You measure your life by what you learn, not by counting how many calendars you've seen. If you're going to have trauma, better it be the shock of discovering the fundamental principle of the universe that some date predictable as next July. ~ Richard Bach

The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre ~ Thomas Paine

How odd to smile during Richard's funeral. He was dead and I was smiling to myself. Grief does that. Laughter lies close in with despair, numbness near by acuity and memory with forgetfulness. I would have got used to it, but I didn't know this at the time. All I knew, was that memory had given pleasure first, then cracking pain. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. ~ Edward L. Bernays

Walking and talking - that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon. ~ Aldous Huxley

If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated. ~ Damien Chazelle

Everyone's face is odd, because we only get one. ~ Benny Bellamacina

And if we seem nutty to you and if we seem like an odd ball to you, just remember one thing. The mighty oak tree was once a nut just like me. ~ Glenn Turner

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same. ~ Pablo Picasso

There's been a number of erroneous biographies, articles and so on written about Billy and we both thought it would be a good idea to produce a true one. ~ Pamela Stephenson

Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps; the need to take risks; and the chance to be number one. ~ George A. Sheehan

How strange or odd some'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on. ~ William Shakespeare

Ah," said Arthur, "er ... " He had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again. ~ Douglas Adams

Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities. ~ Criss Jami

The idea of doing a period movie, some people say, "Isn't it odd that you're doing a period movie? That's a change of pace for you." And, I'm like, "Not really." When you're doing a science fiction movie, it's almost exactly the same. ~ Paul W. S. Anderson

But maybe that isn't possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it's the definition of madness to believe I'm right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed. ~ Stacey Jay