Odds Quotes - Page 5

• You call that evening the odds? You demolished them." Demolished. He liked that. "I left you one." "I noticed." "I promised to share," he told her. "Manners are very important in the Weird. Lying would be quite impolite.

  Ilona Andrews

  Lying, Important, Would Be

  Ilona Andrews (2010). “Bayou Moon”, p.94, NYLA

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• ll K Hamilton Some days the lion eats you, but some times you shove your arm down it's throat and pull it's visera out through it's mouth and kill it. Of course, sometimes it bites your arm off, and then eats you, but you tried, that's what counts. Some days it's not about winning, but about fighting. If you don't try, the lion will most definetely eat you. But sometimes when you put your all into something, and don't give up even when the odds are so against you, you surprise the lion and yourself, and you win.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Fighting

  FaceBook post by Laurell K Hamilton from Apr 04, 2012

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• A Half-Blood of the eldest gods, Shall reach sixteen against all odds And see the world in endless sleep The Hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap A single choice shall end his days Olympus to preserve or raze.

  Rick Riordan

  Hero, Sleep, Blood

  Rick Riordan (2013). “Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series”, p.161, BenBella Books, Inc.

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• The War between the States... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ... [The War] also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'.

  Walter E. Williams

  War, Men, America

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• So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.

  Sue Grafton

  Stars, Memories, Dark

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• I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

  Eve Ensler

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Avocados and Vaginas". Interview with Joe Saxon, www.thestateofthearts.co.uk. May 16, 2015.

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• Hathaway!" Stan barked, coming from the direction of the field. "Nice of you to join us. Get in there now! You're lucky you aren't one of the first ones, " he growled.People were even making bets about whether you'd show. " "Really?" I asked cheerfully. "What kind of odds are there on that? Because I can still change my mind and put down my own bet. Make a little pocket money.

  Richelle Mead

  Nice, People, Mind

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• What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don't need to make smart decisions--if they can get rich making dumb decisions? The incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they're still all wrong.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Smart, People

  Michael Lewis (2015). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in)”, p.266, W. W. Norton & Company

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• One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?

  May Sarton

  Reality, Doe, Matter

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• C’mon, friend. It’s two on one. You sure don’t look like you’re up to those odds. (Stranger) You can’t be talking to me. I don’t have prokas for friends. And I assure you I could gut you both before your stench had time to catch up to your fall. (Syn)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Fall, Talking, Two

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• And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

  Alan Moore

  Daughter, Mother, Children

  "Watchmen". Comic book limited series by Alan Moore, September 1986 – October 1987.

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• ...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Vegetables, Victory, Triumph

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• One of the things I have learned over 26 years in the business is that the most productive place to focus new business efforts on is current clients. Think about it you have the relationship, you have inside knowledge of the company, the people and often, the brand, so it's a much less diverting exercise. Simply put, the odds of getting a higher share with current clients is much better than getting in the front door with new ones.

  Rochelle B Lazarus

  Business, Exercise, Thinking

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• My stories are of gas chambers, shootings, electrified fences, torture, scorching sun, mental abuse, and constant threat of death. But they are also stories of faith, hope, triumph, and love. They are stories of perseverance, loyalty, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and of never giving up!

  Livia Bitton-Jackson

  Loyalty, Perseverance, Giving Up

  Livia Bitton-Jackson (2011). “I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

  Theodore Roethke

  Summer, Wall, Dark

  Theodore Roethke, “In A Dark Time”

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• Never assume. Never make plans. Keep doing the press-ups and deep knee bends: you'll need all your strength and flexibility when your life suddenly implodes. Maybe it won't — some people do lead enchanted lives — but odds are that it will. Some time.

  Robin McKinley

  People, Needs, Knees

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• The Federal Department of Odds and Ends: sweepus underum carpetae.

  Shaun Tan

  Odds And Ends, Ends, Department

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• I'm substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They're sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they're hitting back and forth.

  Neil Armstrong

  Games, White, Space

  "Neil Armstrong's last interview: rare glimpse of man and moon mission" by Paul Gallagher, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2012.

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• A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds.

  Herb Caen

  Crazy, Concrete Jungle, Cities

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• The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

  Steve Coogan

  Writing, Two, People

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• You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you." Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was indecipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half desperate look in his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery and sincerity

  Khaled Hosseini

  Girl, Sexy, Clever

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.278, A&C Black

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• If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.

  Nick Cave

  People, Silence, Different

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• Bet you ten bucks we make it." What are the odds? she thought, and realized with sudden, blinding clarity that she wouldn't take the other side of that bet, that only a loser would bet against them. This is really it, she thought, amazed. This is really forever. I believe in this. "Min?" he said, and she kissed him, putting all her heart into it. "No bet," she said against his mouth. "Your odds are too good." "Our odds are too good

  Jennifer Crusie

  Believe, Heart, Forever

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• If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart.

  Peter Watts

  Believe, Heart, Brain

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• I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal's handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No... one... would... care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Thinking, People, World

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