Toothed Quotes & Sayings

You and what army of snaggled toothed wine sots? — Marvel Comics

Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after all, and what was left was a bond with another adult, who had once been the beloved child. — Nancy Kress

As they approached the next stall, the old woman tending to it looked up at Matthias with suspicious eyes. Nina nodded encouragingly at him.
Matthias smiled broadly and boomed in a singsong voice, "Hello, little friend!"
The woman went from wary to baffled. Nina decided to call it an improvement.
"And how are you today?" Matthias asked.
"Pardon?" the woman said.
"Nothing," Nina said in Ravkan. "He was saying how beautifully the Ravkan women age."
The woman gave a gap-toothed grin and ran her eyes up and down Matthias in an appraising fashion. "Always had a taste for Fjerdans. Ask him if he wants to play Princess and Barbarian," she said with a cackle. — Leigh Bardugo

There is no you in NewVillager, but there is a we. Your job thenceforth will be that of the bodhisattva, the guru, the gap-toothed docent with a serious thing for Whistler's Mother. There will be others, newervillagers than yourself, who never stood a chance either. Only through them do you stand any hope of tracing your footsteps back to where you began. — Daniel Levin Becker

He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a "big-toothed cretin." In 1980, when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. "Wah wah!" Baba exclaimed with disgust. "Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won't come swim in your pool. — Khaled Hosseini

Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.
(Reply to the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521) — Martin Luther

She'd love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out. — Margaret Atwood

The imposter syndrome is at the core off every human being's soul. We're born with it. It's why human beings are alive today. It's an innate sense you're born with. It's why our ancestors avoided the saber-toothed tiger, because they doubted themselves. They were scared of certain things. That's why they worked hard to learn how to build fire, and taking it all through the generations, that impostor syndrome is always going to be there. Instead of being afraid and letting it get you down, be that 1% who embraces the impostor syndrome and realizes that it's never going away. Because the impostor syndrome exists, it weeds out the 99% of people who cannot get over it and cannot get over their fear. It puts the people who do, into the top 1%, and anyone can join us here, when you just embrace the impostor syndrome. — Harry Duran

I c-c-can't use the vidphone," Isidore protested, his heart laboring. "Because I'm hairy, ugly, dirty, stooped, snaggle-toothed, and gray. And also I feel sick from the radiation; I think I'm going to die. — Anonymous

The other two guys sat down. "I'm Gavin Strick," the kid in the Anthrax T-shirt said. "This here's Edward Vaugh, but everyone calls him U.V."
"As in sunlight," U.V. said with a white-toothed grin. "'Cause I get so much of it. — John Whitman

Vurms stopped in his tracks. "You wouldn't dare!"

Glokta smiled. His most revolting, leering, gap-toothed smile. "You'd have to be a bold man to bet your life on what I'd dare. How bold are you? — Joe Abercrombie

Roadblock #5: It's Unpredictable
By and large, human beings don't like surprises. I know that I don't. Okay, maybe I like that rare piece of unexpected good news or a letter from a friend or a thoughtful thank-you. But I'm willing to bet that people in funny hats jumping out of dark closets are responsible for more heart attacks than expressions of unbridled delight. When the doorbell rings late at night, I'm under no illusion that it's the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol!
This, most likely, goes back to our caveman past when a big, exciting surprise was apt to be something like an 800-pound,snarling, saber-toothed tiger about to rip the head from our shoulders. Surprises were usually bad news. (Think about this the next time you're crouching in the dark in somebody's front hall closet with their raincoats and umbrellas.) — Paul Powers

I'm fond of her."
Oh yeah? Fond are you? I've heard of fond. I expect old erection here" - she pointed to the tube of DNA - "was fond of his victim. Fond is a prude's word, Ben. You fancy her. That's what you say. You fancy Miss Library something painful. And who knows?" She grinned, gap-toothed, like the Wife of Bath. "Maybe she fancies you. — Simon Mawer

I hope you understand that it is not the tooth of the saber-toothed tiger I want, it is the tiger. I don't care if it's a old toothless tiger or not, just so it's alive. I intend to start a zoo. — Flannery O'Connor

Final Disposition

Others divided closets full of mother's things.
From the earth, I took her poppies.
I wanted those fandango folds
of red and black chiffon she doted on,
loving the wild and Moorish music of them,
coating her tongue with the thin skin
of their crimson petals.

Snapping her fingers, flamenco dancer,
she'd mock the clack of castanets
in answer to their gypsy cadence.
She would crouch toward the flounce of flowers,
twirl, stamp her foot, then kick it out
as if to lift the ruffles, scarlet
along the hemline of her yard.

And so, I dug up, soil and all,
the thistle-toothed and gray-green clumps
of leaves, the testicle seedpods and hairy stems
both out of season, to transplant them in my less-exotic garden. There, they bloom
her blood's abandon, year after year,
roots holding, their poppy heads nodding
a carefree, opium-ecstatic, possibly forever sleep. — Jane Glazer

And we were alone. Locked in. All the lights were turned off. Around us, below us, this huge house seemed a monster, holding us in its sharp-toothed mouth. If we moved, whispered, breathed heavily, we'd be swallowed and digested. — V.C. Andrews

The typical review makes a Teletubby look like a sabre-toothed tiger. You can economize by reading online rather than squandering $4.95, yes, but all you get is people pusillanimously Favoriting and Liking and Friending. Why is there no Hate button? Why? — Helen DeWitt

Here's the thing about close combat in real life: It's almost always over in a matter of seconds. Not like in the movies, where your hero has the luxury to strategize and maneuver and grapple for minutes on end. Fortunately, when your life is in danger, your brain kicks in. Deep inside your brain this little almond-shaped gland called the amygdala sends out the signal to make your body start pumping out dopamine and adrenaline and cortisol. Time seems to slow, your focus sharpens, you suddenly start perceiving way more stimuli than normal. Neurologists call this tachypsychia. Everyone else calls it the fight-or-flight response. Cavemen who didn't have it got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. So I made a quick decision. I could either be incapacitated by a Taser, or I could put myself within the reach of Bondarchuk's fists. No choice. — Joseph Finder

Look, Paul. I appreciate what you're telling me, but I gave Jake my word. Not to mention the fact, he'd throw my ass in jail if he found out I tried to go around him."
"He wouldn't, you know," he said. "Jake's a pussycat."
Yeah, just a big old saber-toothed tiger. — Josh Lanyon

The worst part was that the Brit's reportage was just spleen-filled editorializing on the lack of ethics in the valley's board-rooms (a favorite subject of hers, which no doubt accounted for his fellow-feeling), and it was also the crux of Kettlewell's schtick. The spectacle of an exec who talked ethics enraged Rat-Toothed more than the vilest baby-killers. He was the kind of revolutionary who liked his firing squads arranged in a circle. — Cory Doctorow

Stirred...the fur-toothed graves of young boys...a thousand slain in the time it would take to do love with a pretty girl or think of a new God. — Kenneth Patchen

Nw a kind of no-man's-land occupied by a neo-Elizabethan hugger-mugger of racketeers, drug dealers, gangsters and abortionists, the shark-toothed area seemed only a rowdier version of the city all around - a freewheeling, free-spending center of free enterprise. — Pico Iyer

Everyone has these ideas, especially about the middle of the country, about people being backwards and three-toothed. — Kelli O'Hara

They were sisters, the pretty one and the one who lived in her shadow, a pale, chip-toothed, uncertain girl who made too much noise while eating celery. — Kathy Hepinstall

Drizzt revealed a small pouch hanging on a fine silver chain around his neck. "A few baubles," he explained. "I need no riches and doubt that I would be able to carry much out of here, anyway! A few baubles will suffice." He sifted through the portion of the pile he had just freed from the ice, uncovering a gem-encrusted sword pommel, its black adamantite hilt masterfully sculpted into the likeness of the toothed maw of a hunting cat. The lure of the intricate workmanship pulled at Drizzt, and with trembling fingers he slid the rest of the weapon out from under the gold. A scimitar. Its curving blade was of silver, and diamond-edged. Drizzt raised it before him, marveling at its lightness and perfect balance. "A few baubles ... and this," he corrected. — R.A. Salvatore

The dissection started out smoothly enough. Several boys lifted the thawed carcass out of its container and put it on the lab table. Then a line of girls elbowed their way in to form a phalanx at the dissecting table. They looked like groupies in a mosh pit. There was no room in the front line for the boys, who stood behind and watched, arms folded across their chests....One girl spent most of her time in a trancelike state picking the sharp little rings out of the squid's suckers. She was deeply intent on trying to harvest as many of the toothed rings as possible. Later that day she went home and shocked her mother by saying she wanted to switch her career goal from baking to marine science. — Wendy Williams

Do you know Aggrey Awori?' Mushana said, 'He's an old man.' Awori was my age, regarded as a miracle of longevity in an AIDS stricken country; a Harvard graduate, Class of '63, a track star. Thirty years ago, a rising bureaucrat, friend and confidant of the pugnacious prime minister, Milton Obote, a pompous gap-toothed northerner who had placed his trust in a goofy general named Idi Amin. Awori, powerful then, had been something of a scourge and a nationalist, but he was from a tribe that straddled the Kenyan border, where even the politics overlapped: Awori's brother was a minister in the Kenyan government. 'Awori is running for president.' 'Does he have a chance?' Mushana shrugged. 'Museveni will get another term. — Paul Theroux

He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry saber-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying "What a magnificent brute!" and "Here, pussy. — Terry Pratchett

You're not a receptionist!" Violet cried.
"I certainly am," Shirley said. "I'm a poor receptionist who lives all by herself, and who wants very much to raise children of her own. Three children, in fact: a smartypants little girl, a hypnotized little boy, and a buck-toothed baby. — Lemony Snicket

Manitoba ... Not sure what to do about them. Restock the province with megafauna and encourage tourism, I think. How quickly can we breed back the saber-toothed cats? — James Nicoll

I close my eyes, and this image floats beside me.
A sweaty toothed mad man with a stare that pounds my brain.
His hands reach out and choke me, and all the time he's mumbling.
"Truth, truth."
Like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.
You push it, stretch it, but it'll never be enough.
You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us.
From the moment we enter crying,
to the moment we leave dying,
it'll just cover your face,
as you wail and cry and scream. — Tom Schulman

In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me. — P. J. O'Rourke

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic's file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police
Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glass. The file spun a little and came to rest, like a compass needle pointing somewhere far off the edge of the map. Looking back from right here and right now I believe I would like to start this story right then - three days after I had just turned fourteen - spending my birthday in jail. - SINKING DEEPER — Steve Vernon

The merry-go-round was running, yes, but ...
It was running backward.
The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes. — Ray Bradbury

Oh, Christ. Word stuff, paper stuff, and that's neither words nor paper in that goddam little coffin, that's my son, my kid, my little dirty gap-toothed boy with the torn britches and the scabs on his knees, and he wasn't ever intended to ride thunder and bridle lightning, no man is. Pulp heroes were all made of wood and they could do it, but Dan's human and soft and easily broken. He hasn't any business there, no man has. — Mike Resnick

These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand. — George Lois

A man with dry, graying skin and a mop of white hair came in with a plastic tray of herbal potions for sale. "No, no, no," Aisha said to him, palm raised as though to ward him off. The man retreated. Ifemelu felt sorry for him, hungry-looking in his worn dashiki, and wondered how much he could possibly make from his sales. She should have bought something. "You talk Igbo to Chijioke. He listen to you," Aisha said. "You talk Igbo?" "Of course I speak Igbo," Ifemelu said, defensive, wondering if Aisha was again suggesting that America had changed her. "Take it easy!" she added, because Aisha had pulled a tiny-toothed comb through a section of her hair. "Your hair hard," Aisha said. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The man's a born straggler, Honey thought, another lucky exception to the rules of natural selection. A million years ago he would've been an easy snack for a saber-toothed tiger. — Carl Hiaasen

He wouldn't spend another standing in the darkness, hot and sick and shaking inside with a confused mess of feelings that weren't worth analyzing. That he shouldn't have felt anyway.
With Rachel gone it was like balancing on the edge of a cliff - and all the little wildflowers, the netting of grass and roots that kept the cliff from sliding into the sea below, were gone. It was just Matt standing there looking down, waiting to fall.
Even Rachel's memory, the sweet recollection of all they had built, all they had shared, was no longer strong enough to fight gravity. From the moment he had looked across the wet grass and seen Nathan Doyle standing in the shadow of a stone saber-toothed tiger, something had changed inside him. Something battened down had torn free, like a sail taking its first deep breath of sea air.
It terrified him.
And at the same time it exhilarated him.
Which terrified him all the more. — Josh Lanyon

Makes no sense to me,' said Huntsekker. 'You don't know who is at your door, but you know the thoughts of a man twenty miles away.' 'Life is a mystery,' said Powdermill, with a gold-toothed grin. 'It is that, right enough,' agreed Huntsekker. — David Gemmell

She's the Incredible Hulk version of a saber-toothed tiger. And she's seriously pissed off. — Peter Telep

Mrs. Weasley was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger. — J.K. Rowling

It's an urban November P.M.: very last leaves down, dry gray hairy grass, brittle bushes, gap-toothed trees. The rising moon looks like it doesn't feel very well. — David Foster Wallace

CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.
MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.
CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.
MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.
CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.
MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.
CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.
MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.
CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding ... planet-cremating.
MORPHEUS: I am the Universe
all things encompassing, all life embracing.
CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds ... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?
MORPHEUS: I am hope. — Neil Gaiman

I'd love to help you, but I'm understaffed." His big, white toothed grin screamed, 'I'm lying.'
"I've got a video of you doing the Macarena."
He scowled. "I hate you. You're just like another pesky daughter to me. Fine. Twist my arm. I'll give you a tracker to use. But it will cost you."
She arched a brow.
"Or not. Now get out."

-Lucifer & Ysabel — Eve Langlais

He had never seen fly-fishing like this before. There were wet flies, and there were dry flies, but this fly augured into the water with a saw-toothed whine and dragged the fish out backwards. — Terry Pratchett

Lately she can read a novel in two hours. She has always been an avid reader, but these days she can read much faster. The colors, the conversations, everything is much more vibrant and inclusive, as if opening a book releases genies trapped inside. The scenes and people between their covers sometimes seem more vivid than real life, with their sunny, pearl-toothed characters, the witty conversation, the handsome stranger squeezed into a subway car or knocking about on the street. Sometimes, when she finishes a book at record speed, Dana feels a slight letdown, as if a good friend has hung up the phone in the middle of a conversation. — Susan H. Crawford

The dolphin (dorado), which is a brilliantly colored tropical fish, must not be confused with the creature, also called dolphin, which is a small, toothed whale. — Thor Heyerdahl

The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. — Ray Bradbury

I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me? — John Le Carre

I say I appear naked before you, but so often I whistle for my invisible armed guard; the gap-toothed, jeering, club-headed mob, my feelings, that are used to having me to themselves. — Jeanette Winterson

The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts. — David Hare

Fine, good, Mary thought. Then how about dragging your skinny ass out of here and making sure your replacement is an ugly, two-toothed gorgon in a muumuu. — J.R. Ward

As I write this entry, I touch a saber-tooth tiger skull in my office. Without stars there could be no skulls — Clifford A. Pickover

He smiles.
It's a blinding, white-toothed smile.
A push-me-over-the-edge-of-the-love-cliff smile.
And before I can say a word in protest, he's got my hand and is dragging me through the carnival.
Note to self: Do not stare directly at his smile. It holds special powers.
Also: Do not kiss him. His mouth is definitely the source of his power. — Jillian Dodd

I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell. The — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He glared at Mr. Diddley's yellow-toothed smile, and thought how he'd like to shove a toothbrush in his mouth and teach him how to use it. — Justin Swapp

Damn it's a shame you're the mighty queen of vials,
With a wide-eyed look and a rotten-toothed smile.
Used to walk with a swagger, now you simply stagger
From one spot on, to the next spot on, to the next spot on, to the next ... — Sadat X

That goddam stunted, red-faced, big-cheeked, apple-cheeked, curlyheaded, midget assed, , google-eyed, undersized, grinning, buck-toothed rat!!" Yossarian sputtered.
~ Catch-22 — Joseph Heller

Even natural languages have personalities. 'Escapement' is the name of a device, a toothed wheel, that controls the motion of the hands of the clock. The word has connotations of gaining freedom. The German equivalent is 'Hemmung.' It means 'restraint,' and also, 'inhibition.' It conjures up images of of losing freedom. In describing a presumably emotionally neutral gadget, the two languages perceive in its functions two diametrically opposite states of human condition. — J.T. Fraser

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins' mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study - where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that's what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name. — Tom McCarthy

Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history. — P. J. O'Rourke

No, child," Nona said. "We were victims of the faeries' pride and greed."
"Victims? Sorry, but most of you don't seem very victimish to me. What about hags, and fossegrims, and redcaps, and all the other sharp-toothed nasties" - I looked pointedly at the dragon - "in your group? I don't feel very bad for anything that's spent all those centuries preying on innocent people."
"It makes sense," Arianna said, her voice soft but thoughtful.
"What?"
"When you introduce an alien species into a new environment, it has to adapt or die out. And usually the way it adapts it by preying on the native species. Look at the dodo birds. They were fine until people came to their island with cats and dogs and pigs, then they became prey."
"You do realize you just compared our entire race to dodo birds."
She shrugged. "If they were never meant to be here in the first place, it's not their fault they had to become predators."
"Thank you, Animal Planet. — Kiersten White

I hear you're single now." Aaron gave a white-toothed smile and tossed his hair.
"Where did you hear that?" Scarlet cocked her head, hoping to find the leak.
He pulled his stool over and sat down. "A little bird told me."
Why did people use that saying? Little birds didn't talk. They chirped. And, unless Aaron spoke bird, he certainly wasn't deciphering any bird chirpings. — Chelsea Fine

Love yourself. Just love yourself. In fact, the love of the self cures every kind of problem you have with yourself. For instance, if someone calls you nappy-headed, it rolls right off your body, if you love nappy hair. Or if someone calls you buck-toothed or too black, that won't be a problem if you love being buck-toothed or black. If you love it, then so what. The development of self-love cures many of the ills that people suffer from. — Alice Walker

Dolores liked that story. Men were wolves and practical women took the knife to them, and those wolves, those sharp-toothed men, they didn't come back after that. — Ari Berk

Sex is the strongest force in the universe. Forget about the Grand Unifying Theory, Stephen Hawking, I'll tell you what it is: women. Aren't women the strongest sex? What force is more magnetic than that? It's not just pussy. We're attracted to women for their energy. We're attracted to their fluidness, their ability to nurture a baby without even knowing how, to be able to put up with screaming and crying and colic and shitty diapers where men would go, "I'm fucking outta here! I'm gonna go kill me a saber-toothed woolly mammoth an'bring it on home to eat tonight. Wa-haaaaaa!" We don't have tits; we couldn't nourish a gnat. — Steven Tyler

Where was he, her Alexander, of once? Was he truly gone? The Alexander of the Summer Garden, of their first Lazarevo days, of the hat in his hands, white toothed, peaceful, laughing, languid, stunning Alexander, had he been left far behind?
Well, Tatiana supposed that was only right.
For Alexander believed his Tatiana of once was gone, too. The swimming child Tatiana of the Luga, of the Neva, of the River Kama.
Perhaps on the surface they were still in their twenties, but their hearts were old. — Paullina Simons

I was in Afghanistan for a while. Sand is overrated if there isn't a beach there to accompany it. I've probably still got sand in places I don't care to mention." "Maybe one day you'll find a pearl in your shorts," Joe said, grinning a gap-toothed grin. — Liliana Hart

There is little chance that aliens from two societies anywhere in the Galaxy will be culturally close enough to really 'get along.' This is something to ponder as you watch the famous cantina scene in Star Wars ... Does this make sense, given the overwhelmingly likely situation that galactic civilizations differ in their level of evolutionary development by thousands or millions of years? Would you share drinks with a trilobite, an ourang-outang, or a saber-toothed tiger? Or would you just arrange to have a few specimens stuffed and carted off to the local museum? — Seth Shostak

Under the horizon, under the bowl of the earth, giant wheels have started turning, monstrous conveyer belts are winding, toothed gears are pulling the sun down and the moon up. The day is tired, it has folded its white wings, flies west-ward, big, in loose clothes, it waves a sleeve, releases stars, blesses the people walking on the chilling earth: good-bye, good-bye, I'll come again tomorrow. — Tatyana Tolstoya

The zipper hung, caught, as he opened the French fatigues, the coils of toothed nylon clotted with salt. He broke it, some tiny metal parts shooting off against the wall of salt-rotten cloth gave, then was in her, effecting the transmission of the old message. Here, even here, in a place he knew for what it was, a coded model of some stranger's memory, the drive held. — William Gibson

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands
the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper
if you've promised your dying mother
then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin
the guy who beat the biochemical rap. — Wally Lamb

Okay." Nate took a deep breath. "Now that we're all caught up on the new no-no's of the house, what do you say we find a tarp and some duct tape and MacGyver ourselves a new window in the living room? Just, you know, to keep out the wind ... and the leaves ... and any sharp-toothed woodland creatures prone to attacking people in their sleep."
Tristan raised a brow.
"What?" Nate shrugged. "Death by dragon? Awesome. Death by rabid forest squirrel? Not cool, man. Not cool. — Chelsea Fine

Shark!" I yelled as my feet hit the wet sand. "There's a shark out there! Everyone get out of the water!"
Man, you want to see humans move fast? Scream that on a crowded beach and watch what happens. Its amazing the fear people have for a scaly, sharp toothed predator. I watched the water empty in seconds, parents scooping up their children and heading to shore, desperate to get out of the ocean, and found it a little ironic. They were so terrified of the big, nasty monster out in the water, when there was a bigger, nastier, deadlier one right here on the beach. — Julie Kagawa

The stone in quarries is found to be of different and unlike qualities. In some it is soft ... in others it is medium ... in still others it is hard as in lava quarries. There are also numerous other kinds: for instance, in Campania , red and black tufas ; in Umbria , Picenum, and Venetia , white tufa which can be cut with a toothed saw like wood. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, further, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies. — Valerie Solanas

A wonder tale can be truer than true, I said. I had learned ( ... ) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real. — Juliet Marillier