Odd Man Out Quotes

1. "And when Mary nodded, Pauline said, "You'd better hurry then, you know how how is," and laughed to show she would not be married to bald John Keane for all the tea in China. In her laugh was every confidence Mary had ever shared with Pauline about her husband's failings, every unguarded criticism, every angry, impromptu, frustrated critique of his personality, his manners, his sometimes morbid, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes impatient ways. A repository, Pauline and her laugh, for every moment in thier marriage when Mary Keane had not loved her husband, when love itself had seemed a misapprehension, a delusion (a stranger standing outside of Schrafft's transformed into an answered prayer), and marriage--which Pauline had had sense enough to spurn--simply an awkward pact with a stranger, any stranger, John or George, Tom, Dick, or Harry.A repository, Pauline and her laugh, her knowing eye, for all that Mary Keane should have kept to herself."
Author: Alice McDermott

2. "Of those of us who comprise the real clan of the book, who read not to judge the reading of others but to take the measure of ourselves. Of those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers. The silence about this was odd, both because there are so many of us and because we are what the world of books is really about. We are the people who once waited for the newest installment of Dickens's latest novel and who kept battered copies of Catcher in the Rye in our back pockets and backpacks. We are the ones who saw to it that Pride and Prejudice never went out of print."
Author: Anna Quindlen

3. "The two came to differ on many, if not most, issues. But the man who would single-handedly defy Hitler in 1940 against all odds bears a striking resemblance to the man who organized the first satyagraha campaign in South Africa."
Author: Arthur Herman

4. "Noal nodded to one of the corridors 'These corridors are narrow. Good choke points. A man could stand there and only have to fight one or two at a time. He'd last maybe a few minutes. ...'Thom, you're in no shape to fight. Mat, you're the one who's luck can find a way out. Neither of you can stay, but I can."
Author: Brandon Sanderson

5. "Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine.""How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one.""You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit."Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110"
Author: Charles Martin

6. "Oh, the dream. The goddamned man + baby dream. Written by the High Commission on Heterosexual Love and Sexual Reproduction and practiced by couples across the land, the dream's a bitch if you're a maternally inclined straight female and not living it by the age of thirty-seven -- a situation of a spermicidally toxic flavor. Of course you want to bring out your six-shooter every time you see another bloated mom hoisting up another pinched-faced spawn on Facebook. You want the dream too!"
Author: Cheryl Strayed

7. "It just seemed so odd as people had never commented on my body before. Every woman obsesses over her figure, but I was happy, I felt sexy - I never thought about it. I know this sounds naive, but I honestly never expected this kind of attention."
Author: Christina Hendricks

8. "The toddler started making this whine/moan noise while pawing at Tabitha. I know as a woman I'm supposed to have this innate love of babies, but the truth is, they kind of remind me of zombies. They stumble around, arms out, moaning. And if they get a hold of you, they suck the energy out of you."
Author: Cindi Madsen

9. "Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

10. "They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident negative attitude. The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness Maxim would have told these things four months, five months ago."
Author: Daphne Du Maurier

11. "As our patient beasts plodded across the sand, I allowed Emerson to remain a few feet ahead, a position he much enjoys and seldom obtains. I could see by the arrogant set of his shoulders that he fancied himself in the role of gallant commander, leading his troops; and I saw no reason to point out that no man can possibly look impressive on donkey-back, particularly when his legs are so long he must hold them out at a forty-five degree angle to keep his feet from dragging on the ground."
Author: Elizabeth Peters

12. "Both the biological and psychological approaches are suspect since both posit an unreal world, completely at odds with human experience, in which people do not get depressed for good reasons having to do with their experience in life and their uneasiness about the facts of existence. Rather, people only get depressed because something in them is flawed or broken. Depression of any magnitude, these approaches claim, is always an illness and never a reaction to being dropped, willy-nilly, into a world not of their making, which they are forced to make mean something."
Author: Eric Maisel

13. "In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote. ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison. "At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting." He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse!"
Author: Erik Larson

14. "Young man, two are the forces most precious to mankind.The first is Demeter, the Goddess.She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her -- and she sustains humanity with solid food.Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin, bringing the counterpart to bread: wineand the blessings of life's flowing juices.His blood, the blood of the grape,lightens the burden of our mortal misery.Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour outto offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed."
Author: Euripides

15. "Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created.Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could."
Author: Francis Spufford

16. "Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?"
Author: G.K. Chesterton

17. "Goddess-nurse of the young, give ear to my prayer, and grant that this woman may reject the love-embraces of youth and dote on grey-haired old men whose powers are dulled, but whose hearts still desire."
Author: Homer

18. "He greeted me in his usual attire - pajama pants. "Hey stranger!" he said, hugging me for a few long seconds. "I've already set up the board. Can I get you some rose"I nodded, overwhelmingly relieved to be with another human being - even if he was really a wolf in grandma's clothing. Or was he just a wolf in wolf's clothing? After all, he wore pajamas... Hmmm. I contemplated all this as he poured me a glass of wine."Mind if I smoke?" he asked as he lit up a joint and motioned me over to the sleek brown couch. Italian, of course.Through the three windows that faced south, north, and west, I saw the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island, where I had paid to have my parents' names inscribed in the immigrant wall of honor. Some American Dream this was!"
Author: Inna Swinton

19. "Rules?"He nodded as he peeled the third egg. "There's not that many. No shutting me out. It's just you and me and no one else." He paused, and myheart was jumping. "And finally, you keep looking damn sexy in my shirts."
Author: J. Lynn

20. "Odd how one man could evoke so many emotions within her. Lust? Oh yeah, much of the time. The urge to smack him upside the back of his head? Yep, that was often there, too. Affection? She'd have said no. He didn't need her affection, everyone admired and loved Sawyer, who was just about the most composed, self-assured, capable man she'd ever met.But there was something suspiciously close to affection filling her now, which had her shaking her head at herself."
Author: Jill Shalvis

21. "A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises."
Author: Johannes Tauler

22. "You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh."
Author: John Green

23. "Todd and Larry were Quinn's people. They were clean-limbed and pretty and, for a man of my age, ludicrously youthful."
Author: John Le Carré

24. "And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone – has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash – together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions."
Author: Joseph Conrad

25. "Rick said, "Is there some place we can go and talk?""You want to talk?," Keir raised an eyebrow. "I never thought I'd see the day.""Nah, I want to tell you this joke I heard."Keir nodded, patient. "Shoot.""Two Irish cops walk into a bar. The first cop says..." Rick's voice dropped. He said gruffly, "I love you. Come home."Keir managed to keep his voice steady. "What's the other cop say?"The sweetness of Rick's smile was like a kick in his chest. "That's what I'm here to find out, boyo."
Author: Josh Lanyon

26. "Edith stared at the ceiling, contemplating the oddness of life. Here she was with this man, whom she hardly knew when she really thought about it, asleep, naked, beside her. She pondered that central truth, which must have struck many brides from Marie Antoinette to Wallis Simpson, that whatever the political, social or financial advantages of a great marriage, there comes a moment when everyone leaves the room and you are left alone with a stranger who has the legal right to copulate with you. She was not at all sure that she had fully negotiated this simple fact until then."
Author: Julian Fellowes

27. "This isn't a question of odds. Of all the men in the world, that woman hose you. If she's still out there, she's waiting for you. Staying alive any way she can until you find her."
Author: Justin Cronin

28. "Truth came home one day, naked and wounded, having been beaten and cursed by the people who did not wish to hear, while his brother Falsehood went dressed in the brightest garments and feasted with every household."What shall I do?" cried Truth to the gods. "No man wishes to hear me and all beat me and throw things at me; look, I am covered with dung.""You are naked" said the goddess Maat, sympathetically. "No naked one can command respect. Therefore take these robes and you will walk without fear and all men will sit at your feet to hear your stories." And she dressed Truth in Fable's garments, and he was welcome at every house."
Author: Kerry Greenwood

29. "I stood there. Still. Frozen. Looking at the most handsome man I'd ever seen in my life. The man I fell in love with when he was still mostly a boy. The man who raised two great kids against the odds. The man who kept the streets of my hometown safe. The only man outside my brother and father who even tried to take care of me, he did it in a way that was beautiful, precious, so I let him. The man who made me happy. The man who was happy being with me."
Author: Kristen Ashley

30. "Will nodded toward Hadrian. "Look at the swords he's carrying. A man wearing one—maybe he knows how to use it, maybe not. A man carries two—he probably don't know nothing about swords, but he wants you to think he does. But a man carrying three swords—that's a lot of weight. No one's gonna haul that much steel around unless he makes a living using them."
Author: Michael J. Sullivan

31. "She raised an eyebrow. "I thought I sensed something oddly human about you. From the moment I though it was simply residue from your recent and ill-advised horizontal romp with that girl""What makes you think we were horizontal?" Darrack's lip twitched"
Author: Michelle Rowen

32. "Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities. This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions. But on the other hand, it wasn't a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly remembered an oration he'd heard his grandfather give many, many times in the past."Straight thinkin'," the old man had said obstinately, "is a delusion. You think things out clear and simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! But real things ain't simple! They ain't clear! Any time you try to figure things out so they're simple and straightforward, you're goin' against nature and you're going to get 'em mixed up! So when something happens and you're in a straightforward, hopeless fix—why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out!"
Author: Murray Leinster

33. "It was a white-collar crime."Illium gave her an odd look. "In the human world, such crimes are lightly punished, though they harm hundreds, leading some to choose death out of despair, while the man who beats a single person is considered the worse criminal."
Author: Nalini Singh

34. "I love meeting 'the Odd Man Out' - like fans of 'Baywatch' who regret, as I do, that Tower 12 Productions didn't put nearly as much energy into writing and directing the show as they put into photographing and editing it."
Author: Nicole Eggert

35. "He was like some prophet of old, scourging the sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people should be in bed.'He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed right at where I was sitting and shouted "This means you!" I could have sunk through the floor."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

36. "But as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves."
Author: Philip K. Dick

37. "Outside, milling under the ubiquitous gaze of security cameras, are bright splashes of colorful souls wearing crystals, beads, and Native American Indian paraphernalia; middle-aged academics with "Erowid" drug website t-shirts; and passengers that give you that odd conspiratorial smile that says, "yes, we are here for the conference." And here we are chowing down on McDonalds and donut King, getting our last hits of civilization before hitting the jungle city of Iquitos and shamanic boot camp. It feels like some whacked-out reality TV show, a generational snapshot of a new psychedelic wave just before it breaks. Bright-eyed Westerners about to die and be reborn in the humid jungles of Peru, drinking the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca..."
Author: Rak Razam

38. "As a writer, I am not goddess of the universes I create. I am at most a stage manager of the plentiful gifts which tumble out of the horn of plenty, which is to say there is a source so sweet and forgiving and generous that I pray every day to let that source be my guide."
Author: Rebecca Wells

39. "It's odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who's happy to fill you in on his life's story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank he'll soon rob.' - Richard Ford, Canada"
Author: Richard Ford

40. "O the sad frugality of the middle-income mind. O the humorless neatness of an intellectuality which buys mass-produced candlesticks and carefully puts one at each end of every philosophical mantlepiece! How far it lies from the playfulness of Him who composed such odd and needless variations on the themes of leaf and backbone, eye and nose! A thousand praises that it has only lately managed to lay its cold hand on the wines, the sauces, and the cheeses of the world! A hymn of thanksgiving that it could not reach into the depths of the sea to clamp its grim simplicities over the creatures that swim luminously in the dark! A shout of rejoicing for the fish who wears his eyeballs at the ends of long stalks, and for the jubilant laughter of the God who holds him in life with a daily bravo at the bravura of his being!"
Author: Robert Farrar Capon

41. "At that moment, Robert saw James Stewart turn to him. A jolt went through him as the steward nodded. Before anyone could begin speaking again, he headed out of the crowd towards Wallace, leaving his men looking on in surprise.‘We have chosen to elect this man as our guardian.' Robert's voice was harsh as he gestured to Wallace. ‘But he is still just the son of a knight.'‘You dare to challenge his election?' demanded Adam. Other shouts of scorn and ire joined his.‘On the contrary,' answered Robert, ‘I am suggesting that a man of William Wallace's achievements, a man who is to be sole guardian of Scotland, bears a title befitting his prowess.' He faced the crowd. ‘I, Sir Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, offer William Wallace the honour of a knighthood.' He turned to Wallace. ‘If he will bend before me."
Author: Robyn Young

42. "Ian nodded his approval. "I've always liked a woman that understood the value of getting out of my bed just as quick as she'd jumped in it."
Author: Rose Wynters

43. "Johnny almost grinned as he nodded. "Tuff enough," he managed, and by the way his eyes were glowing, I figured Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade."
Author: S.E. Hinton

44. "I'm sure I'll find some use for the dress before summer."Kavill nodded, and closed his thick ledger. "Do let me know if it causes anyone to faint—or start a riot."She laughed under her breath, and turned to go, stuffing her hands into her pockets and praying her fingers didn't fall off on the way home."Here," Kavill said, and she turned to find a pair of exquisite dove-gray suede gloves in his hands. "On the house. For many years of loyal patronage." His face bore its usual mask of polite calm and courtesy, but his brown eyes were bright. "And a gift—for a year spent without any gloves at all."
Author: Sarah J. Maas

45. "May we enter, my goddess? I have a nervous old woman out here who is about to wet himself with worry that his brother is dead." Caleb"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

46. "O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse." – from Homer's Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)"
Author: Steven Pressfield

47. "I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows... Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it's horrible, but it's a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."
Author: Tim O'Brien

48. "Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights."
Author: Virginia Woolf

49. "A son," the Queen said, and her smile lit up the room. "Will I give birth soon?"The old woman nodded."When?"The old woman reached out and rested her hand on top of the basket, watched the Queen's eyes darken. "When he's more beautiful than you,"
Author: Wheeler Scott

50. "This anger in your eyes, is it because you are hunting the Windigo?"."I don't know what it is I'm hunting, Henry."Meloux nodded thoughtfully, still looking keenly at Cork. "The Windigo was a man once. His heart was not always ice. What makes a man's heart turn to ice? I would think bout that, and I would think about how to fight the Windigo."
Author: William Kent Krueger

Odd Man Out Quotes Pictures