Eights Quotes & Sayings

He had given work to a nightwalker named Dorothy Evans and gradually became beguiled by her. She was a plump, pretty, cattleman's daughter, pale as a cameo, with the sort of overripe body that always seems four months pregnant. Her long brown hair was braided into figure eights and pinned up over her ears in the English country-girl style. Grim experience was in her eyes, many years of pouting shaped her lips, but everything else about her expression seemed to evince an appealing cupidity, as if she could accept anything as long as it was pleasing. — Ron Hansen

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. — Lucian Freud

Poetry stands or falls by its music. — John Burnside

The shop for fuller figures could be seen through broad, green leaves, its windows full, not of dresses, but fat zeros, pot-bellied legless sixes and bosomy eights, and threes like pregnant, primitive goddesses. In the teashop the chairs were being stood on top of the tables and made a forest of their own, sprouting upwards in fountains of coloured leaves. — Margaret Mahy

My heart is definitely here, and there's no place like home. — Tracy McGrady

First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective. — Boris Beizer

Fears are a complete waste of your time. Nine times out of ten, whatever you're afraid of is not dangerous or life threatening. In fact, it's probably not even real. — Sean Stephenson

These guys fart a lot as well. I'm not saying that girls don't. We just aren't as passionate about them. The smell is sometimes overwhelming and I want to gag. They don't just limit these attacks to the classroom-they can come at you from anywhere around the school. The corridor, the stairwell, the canteen line. There's one area we call Fart Corridor because it belongs to the Year Eights and Nines, who are the biggest perpetrators. They make no apologies and feel no embarrassment. If a girl did one at St. Stella's she'd be an outcast for the rest of her natural life. Here, it's a badge of honor. — Melina Marchetta

I only looked when I was sure he couldn't see me. Some games are too dangerous to play. — Seanan McGuire

A successful artist of any kind has to work so hard that she is justified in refusing to lay down her sceptre until she is placed on the bier. — Edith Evans

It's a thin line between paper and hate,
Friends and snakes, nine millis and thirty-eights,
Hell or the pearly gates ... I was destined to come,
Predicted, blame God, He blew breath in my lungs. — Nas

At night,
when we were little,
we tented Bailey's covers,
crawled underneath with our flashlights
and played cards: Hearts,
Whist, Crazy Eights, and our favourite: Bloody Knuckles.
The competition was vicious,
All day, every day,
we were the Walker Girls -
two peas in a pod
thick as thieves -
but when Gram closed the door
for the night,
we bared our teeth.
We played for chores,
for slave duty,
for truths and dares and money.
We played to be better, brighter,
to be more beautiful,
more,
just more.
But it was all a ruse -
we played
so we could fall asleep
in the same bed
without having to ask,
so we could wrap together
like a braid,
so while we slept
our dreams could switch bodies.


(Found written on the inside cover of Wuthering Heights, Lennie's room) — Jandy Nelson

It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old. — Mark Twain

only a small minority of military personnel have combat-related jobs. In 2015, even after two lengthy wars, the percentage of military personnel in combat specialties was only 14 percent overall - with substantial differences between the services: for instance, 28 percent of enlisted Army personnel serve in jobs that are classified as combat positions compared to just 3 percent of Navy enlisted personnel.
To be sure, many military personnel in noncombat positions end up in combat [zones] anyway. . . . But even when deployed in combat zones, most members of the military never end up fighting. — Rosa Brooks

Furi was doing something indescribable to him. The gentle prods and figure eights Furi made with his tongue had Syn bucking his hips wanting way more, way deeper. — A.E. Via

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
(Interview with Paris Review, 1958) — Ernest Hemingway,

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ. — Bat For Lashes

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

Sometimes in the company of others I find a disagreeable spirit of competitiveness kicks in and each person is shamed into spending rather more than he would have wished. This is a historically established syndrome, of course. One Magus going to Bethlehem would probably have sprung for a box of After Eights. Three Magi on the same trip found themselves laden with gold, frankincense and myrrh and bitterly comtemplating their overdrafts. — James Hamilton-Paterson

Nobody's sex life is such that every experience is a ten. You may have to be satisfied with regular eights or sixes and even an occasional three. — Kevin Leman

It is true that I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, because when I campaigned in Texas I told voters in Texas that I would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain U.S. citizens permanently with no due process. I have repeatedly supported an effort to take that out of that bill, and I honored that campaign commitment. — Ted Cruz

Like everyone else, I have my quirks. For one, I have to own only black cars and the registration has to have eights. It's not something I can explain, it's just there. Another obsession I have is smell. I have to smell good all the time. — Arjun Rampal

In his first weeks back home, scavenging skills rusty, he took the sandals from the feet of his sleeping father and sold them to Abdul for food. — Katherine Boo

Wild card, got it," Duncan said. "Just like in Crazy Eights. I can be a diamond; I can be a spade. Whatever you need me to be, I'm that thing. That is so me. — Christopher Healy

yarn, n.

Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.
Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day's petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eights-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn't have to be true. — David Levithan

The first year I started hockey, I didn't know how to skate, so I got on the ice with all of the hockey players, and we were doing drills where we had to go backwards in figure eights. And I could not skate, and I just kept falling on my butt, and it was very embarrassing. — Shawn Mendes

I immediately cotton on to the fact that intelligence thus lightly used, and one-upmanshipishly displayed, is a birthmark giving me a two-coloured face, is a goitre, a hump on the back, webbed toes, and makes me stink like the night-man. Once again I learn what I knew on my very first day at Kensington School, and have carelessly forgotten, that it is more intelligent to appear less intelligent. I henceforth rein myself in, and publicly give back only what I have been given - fifty-six for seven- eights. — Hal Porter

The way a good rod first flexes and then extends its muscles as the line quickens, tightens, rises off the water and does figure eights in mid-air is one of the miracles of humanly applied dynamics. — John Hillaby

I've always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need x number of hours alone. Now, what that x represents I don't really know, whether it be two and seven-eights or seven and two-eights, but it's a substantial ratio. — Glenn Gould