Zebra Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Zebra. Here they are! All 100 of them:

There's no limit to how much you'll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.
Dr. Seuss
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are you sad with some happy days? Are you neat with some sloppy ways? Or are you sloppy with some neat ways? And on and on and on and on and on and on he went. I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.
Shel Silverstein
Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales, That's all she ever thinks about, Riding with the wind.
Jimi Hendrix
Iggy: "I'll grab a zebra; Gaz, you fill all the bubbles with your trademark scent. so people are choking and gagging; and let's throw beef jerky in their eyes! Now, that's a plan!
James Patterson
Somewhere, the zebra is dancing.
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to someone who can treat it better, the way it should be treated, someone who can make it happy.
C. JoyBell C.
We'd just released a zebra in Las Vegas.
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the Zebra did it.
Steven Wright
Empty packets of hot sauce remind me of the love I used to have for her. Now all I’m left with is this yummy taco.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid... One wants... But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?
Tony Kushner (Angels in America)
Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.
Jodi Picoult (House Rules)
For your birthday, I got you a box. Hooray! It’s empty, so you can fill it with whatever you want.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
I love teamwork. I love the idea of everyone rallying together to help me win.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
If my love could be represented by a blur, it would be the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. Did you know that my love is the only love that can fly backwards?

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.
Chloe Benjamin (The Immortalists)
So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
Demon. Gremlin. Poltergeist. Ghost. Phantom. Spirit. Shadow. Ghoul. Devil. People are afraid of them, so they relegate their existence to stories, volumes of books that can be closed and put on the shelf or left behind at a bed and breakfast; they clench their eyes shut, so they will see no evil. But trust me when I tell you that the zebra is real. Somewhere, the zebra is dancing.
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
I could sit and watch nature documentaries with Jenks and the kids the rest of the night if I wanted. And trust me, watching a dozen pixies scream as a crocodile chomped on a zebra was something not to be missed. They invariably cheered for the crocodile, not the zebra.
Kim Harrison (A Perfect Blood (The Hollows, #10))
Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.)
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
I feel lost yet strangely at home, like a flea who has taken up residence on a zebra.
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
Ria snorted. “Leo’s pride rarely leaves the plains. What are they supposed to mate? The zebras?
Lora Leigh (Mercury's War (Breeds, #12; Feline Breeds, #10))
Anything was possible. When you hear hooves you look for horses, but you can’t discount zebras.
Paula Hawkins (Into the Water)
I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white.
Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
I stand in the center aisle of the auditorium, a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special, looking for someone, anyone to sit next to. A predator approaches: gray jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head. Probably a social studies teacher, hired to coach a blood sport.
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
My scars were reflecting the mist in your headlights I looked like a neon zebra, shaking rain off her stripes
Fiona Apple
Theta crashed next to them on the thick zebra-skin rug. “I’m embalmed.” “Potted and splificated?” “Ossified to the gills. Time for night-night.
Libba Bray (The Diviners (The Diviners, #1))
Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
Rudolf Arnheim
How many seconds does it take to win second? As many as it takes to win first—if you don’t use them properly.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
My trash can got stolen five times. Finally the owner just let me have it.

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
That had to be the answer. When you heard hoofbeats, you didn't think zebras.
Stephen King (Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1))
I turned around, stepped over the Zebra and threw myself overboard.
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses--not zebras.' In other words, most things are exactly what they seem, and the simplest answer is usually the right one.
Judy Melinek (Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner)
It takes surprisingly little in terms of uncontrollable unpleasantness to make humans give up and become helpless in a generalized way.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
A cake for all is not a celebration of one. Cupcakes are the ultimate birthday cake.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
When I’m feeling down, I make myself a big bowl of Up Soup. The bowl only looks empty, but in reality it’s full of hope. Grab a spoon, there’s plenty for both of us.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: 'You see,' he says, 'now that’s formalism.
Alain Robbe-Grillet
if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they’re horses, not zebras. And you’re hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.
James S.A. Corey (Nemesis Games (The Expanse, #5))
I’ll wipe a booger on your wall, not only to say I was here, but also to say thanks for having me over.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a large scale,
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
My capacity for invention is flash hot stark, I thought. Sucker sunshade. Disembodied radar-reconnaissance. Not to mention Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras. Pity about the rest of me.
Robin McKinley (Sunshine)
And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
No, he wasn’t letting Dez MacDermot get away. He’d take her down like his ancestors took down full-grown zebra.
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Event (Pride, #1))
I hid Mrs. Frozenwater’s body in the ice cube trays in my freezer. Better to keep her there than let her memory thaw out and evaporate. Scotch on the rocks, anyone?

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
The beautiful part about killing someone with an icicle is the murder weapon melts and then evaporates. And your assassination can be fruit flavored!
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
A large percentage of what we think of when we talk about stress-related diseases are disorders of excessive stress-responses.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
I want a trophy wife. I’ll keep her on the shelf next to my future Nobel peace prize. (I plan on inventing a gun that shoots love, not bullets.)

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Both observer and observed are parts of the world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between them has no meaningful significance. In other words, if you see a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage, it is because there really is a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage.
Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design)
New eyes awaken. I send Love's name into the world with wings And songs grow up around me like a jungle. Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes Your Spirit played in Eden. Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise Shine on the face of the abyss And I am drunk with the great wilderness Of the sixth day in Genesis. But sound is never half so fair As when that music turns to air And the universe dies of excellence. Sun, moon and stars Fall from their heavenly towers. Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore. Though fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf, All fear another wind, another thunder: Then one more voice Snuffs all their flares in one gust. And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars And no more buds and no more Eden And no more animals and no more sea: While God sings by himself in acres of night And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.
Thomas Merton
My mom and dad died, but in their place I got a house of fog that’s easy to hide my feelings in. (No smoking, please.)

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Day or night, I can’t see the wind. But at night, it feels like I can see it even less. What’s less visible than invisible?

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
In a world of stressful lack of control, an amazing source of control we all have is the ability to make the world a better place, one act at a time.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
A BMS hears hoofbeats outside his window, the first thing he thinks of is a zebra
Samuel Shem
One of the side effects of Viagra is blurred vision. Sounds great! When I’m taking a pill to pop a stiffy, how great is it that any woman I look at has blurred features and therefore is as beautiful as an impressionistic painting?

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Some men eat dinner with silverware. Some use chopsticks. I prefer zippers.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
You should shoot. I should shoo.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
...when doing science (or perhaps when doing anything at all in a society as judgmental as our own), be very careful and very certain before pronouncing something to be a norm - because at that instant, you have made it supremely difficult to ever again look objectively at an exception to that supposed norm.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “ ‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5))
I can throw an orange like a baseball, but I can’t eat a baseball like an orange. Let that be a life lesson for you.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
You know when you were a kid... Didn't you ever try going across a zebra crossing, stepping only on the white parts? Funny, isn't it? This is exactly the same thing, really. But the moment you realize the black parts are far below and the thought of falling through makes you feel scared... that's it. You suddenly can't do something you were actually doing real easily.
Chica Umino (Honey and Clover, Vol. 7)
Things aren’t often what they appear to be at first blush. But embarrassment is.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I hired a chauffeur and I became a motivational speaker, because I don’t drive—I’m driven.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I tried telling him without telling him, through body language, and I observed he was unobservant.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I bought you a box of karate chops, but it could be dangerous to open it with a knife. And cats are masters at getting into boxes, so here, try opening it with my portable meow maker.

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Lead is to lead as follow is to follow. And lead is to lead as a type of metal is to a type of metal. Which brings me to my point: To love is to lead with your heart, while allowing your ego to sink like lead.

Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Spoken words are like seeds that we plant which will eventually grow into something sweet or bitter. Our actions in this life are seeds we're planning for the other life promised by Allah.
Shems Friedlander (When You Hear Hoofbeats Think of a Zebra)
And I suspect, Mr. Potter, that if I leave you alone for two months with your schoolbooks, even without a wand, I will return to this house only to find a crater billowing purple smoke, a depopulated city surrounding it and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of England.
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other—and land, of course.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
A moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song, a zebra finch will never feel the electric buzz of a black ghost knifefish, a knifefish will never see through the eyes of a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can try.
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
I’m more than just a pretty face. I’m also delusional.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Life seems so am/pm. But really it’s not as balanced as all that.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
Subjected to enough uncontrollable stress, we learn to be helpless—we lack the motivation to try to live because we assume the worst; we lack the cognitive clarity to perceive when things are actually going fine, and we feel an aching lack of pleasure in everything.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
Laws are chains to the many, and whips to the few.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I make believe like asexuals make love—alone, with cardboard tubes.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Back in high school, I started a gang called “The Illiterates.” To easily identify fellow gang members, we all wore letterman jackets.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I put the “sing” in single. But only when I’m in the shower.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I am the man of your dreams. Go back to sleep.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
I’m a lion in my environment. But take me out of my cage, and I’m a lamb.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
This is the critical point of this book: if you are that zebra running for your life, or that lion sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for dealing with such short-term physical emergencies. For the vast majority of beasts on this planet, stress is about a short-term crisis, after which it’s either over with or you’re over with. When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
There is a book out called Dog Training Made Easy, and it was sent to me the other day by the publisher, who rightly guessed that it would catch my eye. I like to read books on dog training. Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can’t be trained and shouldn’t be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command. For a number of years past I have been agreeably encumbered by a very large and dissolute dachshund named Fred. Of all the dogs whom I have served I’ve never known one who understood so much of what I say or held it in such deep contempt. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something that he wants to do. And when I answer his peremptory scratch at the door and hold the door open for him to walk through, he stops in the middle and lights a cigarette, just to hold me up.
E.B. White (E.B. White on Dogs)
Elephants, it turns out, are surprisingly stealthy. As the sunlight fades, other species declare their presence. Throngs of zebras and wildebeests thunder by in the distance, trailing dust clouds. Cape buffalo snort and raise their horns and position themselves in front of their young. Giraffes stare over treetops, their huge brown eyes blinking, then lope away in seeming slow motion. But no elephants.
Thomas French (Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives)
Innocent? Tell me human, who among you is innocent? Who among you has not destroyed without need or hurt without pity? Should a lion ponder his role in thinning the herds? Does he question whether or not he is doing the right thing as he tears into a zebra’s flesh?” he snarled. His next words were slow and measured, and more to himself than to Natalya. “No….he knows only that he has teeth and claws….and an insatiable lust for blood.
Jessica Majzner (Beyond the Veil)
That's life. You travel the world over, aimless, friendless, adrift. Then suddenly you find another rodent who shares the sorrows of your juiced organs. I felt as though he had ironed out the wrinkled sheet of my heart.
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Call Me Zebra)
The defining feature of a major depression is loss of pleasure. If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a “genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones. Imagine explaining to an extraterrestrial visitor the concept of a horse. It would take some time. If the next thing you tried to explain were the concept of a zebra, the conversation would be shorter. You would simply point out that a zebra is a lot like a horse but with black and white strips. Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.
Scott Adams (How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life)
When the zebra-striped lizards return, bulbous eyes twisting in every direction, they carry a platter garnished with dried fruit and something that resembles a duck. It’s plucked and roasted but still has its head intact. A warm, herbal scent tickles my nose. At least it’s cooked. "May I introduce you all to the main course?” Morpheus spreads out an arm with dramatic flair. “Dinner, meet your worthy adversaries, the hungry guests.” My tongue dries to sandpaper as the bird’s eyes pop open, and it hobbles to stand on webbed feet, flesh brown and glistening with glaze and oil. There’s a bell hung around its neck, and it jingles as the duck bows to greet everyone. This cannot be happening. Morpheus drags the heavy mallet from beside his chair and pounds it on the table like a judge’s gavel. “Now that we’re all acquainted, let the walloping begin.” Gossamer launches from Morpheus’s shoulder and leaves the room with the other sprites as mass confusion erupts. All the guests leap to their feet, mallets in hand, to chase the jingling duck.
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
Now then, Mr. Crab," said the zebra, "here are the people I told you about; and they know more than you do, who live in a pool, and more than I do, who live in a forest. For they have been travelers all over the world, and know every part of it." "There's more of the world than Oz," declared the crab, in a stubborn voice. "That is true," said Dorothy; "but I used to live in Kansas, in the United States, and I've been to California and to Australia--and so has Uncle Henry." "For my part," added the Shaggy Man, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries." "And I," said the Wizard, "have been to Europe and Ireland." "So you see," continued the zebra, addressing the crab, "here are people of real consequence, who know what they are talking about.
L. Frank Baum (The Emerald City of Oz (Oz, #6))
Everything in physiology follows the rule that too much can be as bad as too little. There are optimal points of allostatic balance. For example, while a moderate amount of exercise generally increases bone mass, thirty-year-old athletes who run 40 to 50 miles a week can wind up with decalcified bones, decreased bone mass, increased risk of stress fractures and scoliosis (sideways curvature of the spine)—their skeletons look like those of seventy-year-olds. To put exercise in perspective, imagine this: sit with a group of hunter-gatherers from the African grasslands and explain to them that in our world we have so much food and so much free time that some of us run 26 miles in a day, simply for the sheer pleasure of it. They are likely to say, “Are you crazy? That’s stressful.” Throughout hominid history, if you’re running 26 miles in a day, you’re either very intent on eating someone or someone’s very intent on eating you.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
Freud was fascinated with depression and focused on the issue that we began with—why is it that most of us can have occasional terrible experiences, feel depressed, and then recover, while a few of us collapse into major depression (melancholia)? In his classic essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), Freud began with what the two have in common. In both cases, he felt, there is the loss of a love object. (In Freudian terms, such an “object” is usually a person, but can also be a goal or an ideal.) In Freud’s formulation, in every loving relationship there is ambivalence, mixed feelings—elements of hatred as well as love. In the case of a small, reactive depression—mourning—you are able to deal with those mixed feelings in a healthy manner: you lose, you grieve, and then you recover. In the case of a major melancholic depression, you have become obsessed with the ambivalence—the simultaneity, the irreconcilable nature of the intense love alongside the intense hatred. Melancholia—a major depression—Freud theorized, is the internal conflict generated by this ambivalence. This can begin to explain the intensity of grief experienced in a major depression. If you are obsessed with the intensely mixed feelings, you grieve doubly after a loss—for your loss of the loved individual and for the loss of any chance now to ever resolve the difficulties. “If only I had said the things I needed to, if only we could have worked things out”—for all of time, you have lost the chance to purge yourself of the ambivalence. For the rest of your life, you will be reaching for the door to let you into a place of pure, unsullied love, and you can never reach that door. It also explains the intensity of the guilt often experienced in major depression. If you truly harbored intense anger toward the person along with love, in the aftermath of your loss there must be some facet of you that is celebrating, alongside the grieving. “He’s gone; that’s terrible but…thank god, I can finally live, I can finally grow up, no more of this or that.” Inevitably, a metaphorical instant later, there must come a paralyzing belief that you have become a horrible monster to feel any sense of relief or pleasure at a time like this. Incapacitating guilt. This theory also explains the tendency of major depressives in such circumstances to, oddly, begin to take on some of the traits of the lost loved/hated one—and not just any traits, but invariably the ones that the survivor found most irritating. Psychodynamically, this is wonderfully logical. By taking on a trait, you are being loyal to your lost, beloved opponent. By picking an irritating trait, you are still trying to convince the world you were right to be irritated—you see how you hate it when I do it; can you imagine what it was like to have to put up with that for years? And by picking a trait that, most of all, you find irritating, you are not only still trying to score points in your argument with the departed, but you are punishing yourself for arguing as well. Out of the Freudian school of thought has come one of the more apt descriptions of depression—“aggression turned inward.” Suddenly the loss of pleasure, the psychomotor retardation, the impulse to suicide all make sense. As do the elevated glucocorticoid levels. This does not describe someone too lethargic to function; it is more like the actual state of a patient in depression, exhausted from the most draining emotional conflict of his or her life—one going on entirely within. If that doesn’t count as psychologically stressful, I don’t know what does.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
This body is like the earth. Our bones are like mountains. Our belly is like the sea. Our flesh is like the dust and mud. The hair that grows on us is like plants, and the skin from which this hair grows is like arable land, and the area of our body where hair does not grow is akin to saline soil. Our sadness is like darkness and our laughter like sunlight. Sleep is brother to death. Our childhood is like spring, our youth like summer. Our maturity is like the autumn, our old age like the winter of life. All of our movements are like the stars moving in the sky.
Shems Friedlander (When You Hear Hoofbeats Think of a Zebra)
Memory can be dramatically disrupted if you force something that’s implicit into explicit channels. Here’s an example that will finally make reading this book worth your while—how to make neurobiology work to your competitive advantage at sports. You’re playing tennis against someone who is beating the pants off of you. Wait until your adversary has pulled off some amazing backhand, then offer a warm smile and say, “You are a fabulous tennis player. I mean it; you’re terrific. Look at that shot you just made. How did you do that? When you do a backhand like that, do you hold your thumb this way or that, and what about your other fingers? And how about your butt, do you scrunch up the left side of it and put your weight on your right toes, or the other way around?” Do it right, and the next time that shot is called for, your opponent/victim will make the mistake of thinking about it explicitly, and the stroke won’t be anywhere near as effective. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
Anne Sexton (Selected Poems)