Zebra Stripes Quotes

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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
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)
My scars were reflecting the mist in your headlights I looked like a neon zebra, shaking rain off her stripes
Fiona Apple
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
Sophie coughed, and Oliver felt his cheeks becoming warm. “Don’t be an ass, Andrew.” “That’s a little bit difficult to accomplish, y’know?” Andrew replied. “I mean, if you had been so kind as to paint me with black and white stripes, I would’ve been a zebra!
Zeinab Alayan (Puppet Parade)
And not in the crazy fuck’s normal bizarre-drobe of zebra stripes and feather boas. The angel had a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Blue jeans that were one trip through the wash away from losing their structural integrity. And a Nirvana shirt from the Saint Andrew’s Hall performance in Detroit on October 11, 1991. That
J.R. Ward (The Chosen (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #15))
A zebra like him would never change his stripes, and I’d been an idiot to fall for his gorgeous looks.
C.M. Owens (Love & College)
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)
It has something to do with the cosmic rays coming from outer space. They strike some person or thing, and then you get a mutation - like the stripes on a zebra. The attraction of two such mutants to one another would have an almost incestuous appeal and be far stronger than the bond of love between ordinary human beings.
Anna Kavan (Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories)
A zebra has stripes, the American flag has stripes, and I have an erection. Coincidence?
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
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))
Terrorists are like zebras; those having more white stripes than black are good terrorists,those with more black stripes than white are bad ones.
Shahid Hussain Raja (The Syrian Crises: Past ,Present and Future)
You can't make a zebra by painting stripes on a horse.
Holly Bodger (5 to 1)
Zebras don’t change their stripes, and war criminals don’t repent.
Jodi Picoult (The Storyteller)
The little woman, wearing a pink and black zigzag-striped pantsuit over a black turtleneck, resembled a skinny zebra who'd OD'd on Pepto-Bismol.
Vonnie Davis (Bearing It All (Highlander's Beloved, #3))
We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He was dumbfounded. “They’re called zebras,” I said. “Have they been painted with a brush?” “No, no. They look like that naturally.” “What happens when it rains?” “Nothing.” “The stripes don’t melt?” “No.
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
When a guitar string is plucked or when children jiggle a jump rope, the shape that appears is a sine wave. The ripples on a pond, the ridges of sand dunes, the stripes of a zebra—all are manifestations of nature’s most basic mechanism of pattern formation: the emergence of sinusoidal structure from a background of bland uniformity.
Steven H. Strogatz (The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity)
As delightful as the Just So explanations are of how spots, stripes, humps and horns came to be, biology can now tell us stories about butterflies, zebras and leopards that I contend are every bit as enchanting as Kipling's fairy tales. What's more, they offer some simple, elegant truths that deepen our understanding of all animal forms, including ourselves.
Sean B. Carroll (Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo)
To me Chocolate is like the quintessential ingredient necessary for a good life; almost equal in importance to water or the sun. Life without chocolate is like a zebra without stripes or a leopard without spots. Chocolates are to sweets what salts are to savories. They give life dimension, flavor, and color. Without chocolate life is bland, boring, and unexciting.
John W Lord
Hearing her favorite story had calmed her. It had made her braver. Familiar stories do that. They're as much a part of our identity as the backs of our hands. If we were zebras, our stories would be our stripes. If we were pilots, they would be our compass. If we were adventurers, they'd be our North Star. Our stories are what makes us unique. The combination of stories in our lives—the unique mix of the stories we choose to read, choose to live—makes each of us just a tiny bit different from everyone else on the planet.
Kristin O'Donnell Tubb (The Story Collector (The Story Collector #1))
he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.  She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d; 50 And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries — So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries, She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self. Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar: Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet! She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete: 60
John Keats (Complete Works of John Keats)
use this method of airframe shock testing in economic engineering, the prices of commodities are shocked, and the public consumer reaction is monitored. The resulting echoes of the economic shock are interpreted theoretically by computers and the psycho-economic structure of the economy is thus discovered. It is by this process that partial differential and difference matrices are discovered that define the family household and make possible its evaluation as an economic industry (dissipative consumer structure). Then the response of the household to future shocks can be predicted and manipulated, and society becomes a well-regulated animal with its reins under the control of a sophisticated computer-regulated social energy bookkeeping system. “Eventually every individual element of the structure comes under computer control through a knowledge of personal preferences, such know ledge guaranteed by computer association of consumer preferences (universal product code — UPC — zebra-stripe pricing codes on packages) with identified consumers (identified via association with the use of a credit card and later a permanent “tatooed” body number [WC emphasis] invisible under normal ambient illumination.… THE ECONOMIC MODEL “...The Harvard Economic Research Project (1948-) was an extension of World War II Operations Research. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy: at first the American economy, and then the world economy. It was felt that with sufficient mathematical foundation and data, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile. Such has proven to be the case. Moreover, the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target.
Milton William Cooper (Behold! a Pale Horse, by William Cooper: Reprint recomposed, illustrated & annotated for coherence & clarity (Public Cache))
A three-dimensional shadow? A hologrammatic shadow? The Graz Tower: a building in the form of a shadow. This is, in itself, a misconception: what makes a shadow a shadow is the two dimensions (it is the same with the image). Even the zebra's shadow has no stripes. Ubu incarnate: we lag irreparably behind stupidity. Where do you rate your pain on a sliding scale from 0 to 10? 0= no pain, 10 = unbearable. It's a bit like plucking daisy petals: he loves me, he loves me not ... They are the petals of pain.
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004)
walls of the Young Adult Room were painted purple and yellow. There were swirly zebra-print rugs on the floor and a lumpy cluster of beanbag chairs. A couple of sofas were designed to look like Scrabble trays, with letter-square pillows. Akimi nudged Kyle in the ribs. “Check it out.” In the far corner stood a carnival ticket booth with a mechanical dummy seated inside. A “Fun & Games” banner hung off the booth’s striped roof. The dummy inside the glass booth? He looked like Mr. Lemoncello. He wasn’t wearing a turban, but the Mr. Lemoncello mannequin reminded Kyle of the Zoltar Speaks fortuneteller booths he’d seen in video game arcades. “That’s not really him, is it?” said Akimi, who was right behind Kyle. “No. It’s a mechanical doll.” The frozen automaton was dressed in a black top hat and a bright red ringmaster jacket. Since the booth had the “Fun & Games” banner, Kyle figured you might have to talk to the dummy to get a game. “Um, hello,” he said. “We’d like to play a board game.” Bells rang, whistles whistled, and chaser lights blinked.
Chris Grabenstein (Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (Mr. Lemoncello's Library, #1))
Louis said the reason he wears stripes is because he secretly wants to be a zebra
Jessica Stewart (Louis Tomlinson: 125 Facts You Need To Know!)
The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called.
José Saramago (Blindness)
I have seen what he can do. The question is whether he is still in the game." "What game?" Francis shook his head and slipped the papers into his laptop bag. "Tigers and stripes. Not everything that has stripes is a zebra.
Aleksandr Voinov (Return on Investment (Return on Investment, #1))
As far as she could tell, basketball involved a herd of impossibly tall men racing up and down a polished wooden floor, passing a ball back and forth until one of them forged ahead to the basket to try to score. It seemed that whenever the contest became interesting, the referees would blow their whistles and everything would come to a grinding halt. She couldn’t understand why the referees chose to wear zebra-striped shirts, either, since it wasn’t likely anyone would confuse the short, balding men with the players.
Debbie Macomber (The Manning Grooms: Bride on the Loose / Same Time, Next Year)
A crime scene is a crime scene is a crime scene. Except for the unique nightmarish qualities of each one. I was standing in a bedroom of a very nice one-story ranch. There was a white ceiling fan that turned slowly. It made a faint whirring creak, as if it wasn’t screwed in tight on one side. Better to concentrate on the small things. The way the east light fell through the slanting blinds, painting the room in zebra-stripe shadows. Better not to look at what was left on the bed. Didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to see. Had to see. Had to look. Might find a clue. Sure, and pigs could fucking fly. But still, maybe, maybe there would be a clue. Maybe. Hope is a lying bitch. There
Laurell K. Hamilton (The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #2))
What do you call a zebra with no stripes? A horse!
Silly Willy (The Best Joke Book for Silly Kids. The Funniest Jokes, One Liners, Riddles, Brain Teasers, Knock Knock Jokes, Would You Rather and Trivia!: Children's ... Ages 7-9 8-12 (Joke books for Silly Kids))
In 2012, when Amanda Melin, a scientist who studies animal vision, met Tim Caro, a scientist who studies animal patterns, their conversation naturally turned to zebras. Caro had become the latest in a long line of biologists to wonder why zebras have such conspicuous black-and-white patterns. One of the earliest and most prominent hypotheses, he told Melin, was that the stripes counterintuitively act as camouflage. They mess with the eyes of predators like lions and hyenas by breaking up the zebra’s outline, or by helping it to blend in among the vertical trunks of trees, or by causing a confusing blur when it runs. Melin was dubious. “I had a look on my face,” she recalls. “I said, ‘I think most of the carnivores are hunting at night, and their visual acuity is going to be so much worse than humans’. They probably can’t see the stripes.’ And Tim went, ‘What?’ ” Humans outshine almost every other animal at resolving detail. Our exceptionally sharp vision, Melin realized, gives us a rarefied view of a zebra’s stripes. She and Caro calculated that on a bright day, people with excellent eyesight can distinguish the black-and-white bands from 200 yards away. Lions can only do so at 90 yards and hyenas at 50 yards. And those distances roughly halve at dawn and dusk, when these predators are more likely to hunt. Melin was right: The stripes can’t possibly act as camouflage because predators can only make them out at close range, by which point they can almost certainly hear and smell the zebra. At most distances, the stripes would just fuse together into a uniform gray. To a hunting lion, a zebra mostly looks like a donkey.[*10]
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
. Mom hustled Adam, Thomas, Kat and me into the minivan. We spent ten minutes driving down Southern State Highway before we pulled up in front of my grandparents’ impressive, white Victorian home. Engraved columns hovered around the garden on the side of the house and the lawn was zebra striped from a fresh cut; it meant Grandpa was expecting us. He was nowhere to be seen, but if I had to guess he was probably in the backyard skimming the swimming pool. Oak trees that lined the property kept him busy during the fall and summer months between his weekly pool and grass preservations.
K.L. Randis (Spilled Milk)
You went on making it, or trying to, all your life—working your way up the same old terraced slopes with different street names on them.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
The little maid stood and watched me with wide blue eyes, as if I was committing lese majesty.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
Entering the room was like stepping into the interior of Manny’s head.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
The mourning dove had returned to the television antenna. He sat there still and perfect as a heraldic bird. I said hoo-hoo to him and got a response, hoo-hoo, and I felt better.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
Isn’t twenty-four a little late for the big rebellion?” “Harriet has been living under military occupation. She’s a fugitive from injustice.” “So she takes up with a fugitive from justice. I’ve seen it happen before.” Royal paused. “How much danger do you think she’s in?
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
I’m a very self-flagellant type. But I suppose it’s better than having other people do it to you. And so very much more economical—it saves paying the middlemen.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
Meyer’s parting smile was gentle. He didn’t believe in evil. His father had died in Buchenwald, and he didn’t believe in evil.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
The blonde woman was heavily made up in an old-fashioned way, as if she had been entertaining ghosts. Her triangular face had the taut immobility that plastic surgery often leaves behind.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
The lake seemed artificial seen from here: a man-made lake dyed a special shade of blue and surrounded by papier-mâché mountains. In this setting it was hard to believe in death, and life itself was denatured.
Ross Macdonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse (Lew Archer #10))
Mom hustled Adam, Thomas, Kat and me into the minivan. We spent ten minutes driving down Southern State Highway before we pulled up in front of my grandparents’ impressive, white Victorian home. Engraved columns hovered around the garden on the side of the house and the lawn was zebra striped from a fresh cut; it meant Grandpa was expecting us. He was nowhere to be seen, but if I had to guess he was probably in the backyard skimming the swimming pool. Oak trees that lined the property kept him busy during the fall and summer months between his weekly pool and grass preservations.
K.L. Randis (Spilled Milk)
Zebras live in family groups. As no two zebras have exactly the same pattern of stripes, every baby zebra must learn its own mother’s pattern.
Mary Pope Osborne (Lions at Lunchtime)
Do You Like Animals? is a wild animal menagerie of fun as children view pictures and read stories about elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, hippos, zebras, giraffes, camels, kangaroos, penguins, and much more. The book helps children meet the animals up close and learn fun facts about how they live in the wild. The author/illustrator viewed the animals in the jungles, bush, and deserts of Africa, Australia, and South America before writing about them and painting them in forms that would be enjoyable and educational for children. For example, children will learn why elephants have trunks, why giraffes and leopards have spots, whether zebras’ stripes are black-on-white or white-on-black, how long hippos can hold their breath, the amazing characteristics of howler monkeys’ tails, why some kangaroos have a pouch, whether ostriches really bury their heads in the sand, the types of camels that have either one or two humps… Through stories that rhyme and pictures painted with punch this book is a must for children who like to have fun while they learn!
M.S. Gatto (Do You Like Wild Animals?)
All human embryos start out as female: the female sex is the basic form from which the male sex will differentiate itself. The first male hormones do not appear until the eight week of pregnancy.
Léo Grasset (How the Zebra Got Its Stripes)
To imagine that something that behaves in an uncertain way is less effective than its predictable equivalent is an irrational cognitive bias, if a very widespread one among humans.
Léo Grasset (How the Zebra Got Its Stripes)
Many bird species incorporate coloured plastic detritus when building their nests (...), using the bright colours as signals to neighbouring birds or to attract females. (...) the largest individuals with the best territories use more plastic in their nests than weaker individuals with less desirable territories. This eye-catching display reduces conflict: each individual can size up a rival´s strenght at a glance, and so avoid getting into fights in which they are likely to be beaten.
Léo Grasset (How the Zebra Got Its Stripes)
I must have passed out, because one minute I was biting my bottom lip and fighting back tears and the next I was sleeping on top of a pile of Pillow Pets—unicorns, lady bugs, and brown floppy dogs—covered in a zebra-striped Snuggie. Strange, but definitely comfortable. He
Angela Scott (Anyone?)
From the French window I walked out under a kind of pergola covered in part by a climbing rose tree, in part by laths, one inch wide with half an inch of space between them. The sun was shining and the shadows of the laths made a zebra-like pattern on the ground and across the seat and back of a garden chair, which was standing at this end of the pergola. That chair--shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade. Today the precept swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow--these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalization, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event. The even was this succession of azure furnace doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying.
Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception)
Life is like a zebra. There are white and black stripes on it. When you are on a white stripe walk slowly, enjoy it. When you come to a black stripe raise your collar, shut your eyes, and run as fast as you can go to get to a white one. But remember, there is always a white stripe after a black one!
The Harvard Independent (100 Successful College Application Essays)
No two zebras are alike. Each pattern of stripes is unique, unlike any other zebra that ever lived. It was my mom’s way of reminding me to just be me. That I don’t have to try and be like everyone else. To stand out.
Samantha Christy (Purple Orchids (The Mitchell Sisters, #1))
No two zebras are alike. Each pattern of stripes is unique, unlike any other zebra that ever lived. It was my mom’s way of reminding me to just be me. That I don’t have to try and be like everyone else. To stand out.” She laughs. “And apparently zebras can’t be broken. They can’t be domesticated. My mom was always telling me when I was growing up that I was part zebra because she could never tame me.
Samantha Christy (Purple Orchids (The Mitchell Sisters, #1))
Harry had reason to feel exuberant. In March he had been promoted to master sergeant, the highest rank for an enlisted man. At a time when few nisei were as yet commissioned, he felt like a “king” with his six white stripes placed below the 33rd Division’s Yellow Cross. “My arm looked like a zebra.
Pamela Rotner Sakamoto (Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds)
Zebras can’t change their stripes.” I lifted my head and pressed a hand to my breastbone. “But God can change their hearts.
Rebekah Millet (Julia Monroe Begins Again (Beignets for Two))
Her father showed her the Himalayan yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Patagonian giant sloth. There was the Irish elk with antles as big as wings. The South African quagga, which started as a zebra until it ran out of stripes and became a horse. The great auk, the lion-tailed monkey, the Queensland tiger. So many incredible extra creatures in the world, and nobody had found a single one of them. "Do you think they're real?" she said. Her father nodded. "I have begun to feel comforted," he said, "by the thought of all we do not know, which is nearly everything.
Rachel Joyce (Miss Benson's Beetle)