Can I Have Your Number Quotes

“You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large," Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. "But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite."
"Wow," Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. "Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

“True love is not a wish list but a "wish feeling." And the number one feeling-even before the feeling of love-is the feeling of safety. Without feeling safe, you will never feel true love. You must have trust in your partner's character and prioritize finding a partner who is honest, communicative, and empathic-someone who values growing-so you can feel safe to vulnerably be your truest core self with him-and then together the two of you can support one another to grow into your best possible selves.”

— Karen Salmansohn

“Look I have somewhere I have to be and I don't particularly love that I have to go, but you freaking out and making a scene is not going to do anything other than piss me off. I hope you had a good time last night and you can leave your number but we both know the chances of me calling you are slim to none. If you don't want to be treated like crap maybe you should stop going home with drunken dudes you don't know. Trust me we're really only after one thing and the next morning all we really want is for you to go quietly away. I have a headache and I feel like I'm going to hurl, plus I have to spend the next hour in a car with someone that will be silently loathing me and joyously plotting my death so really can we just save the histrionics and get a move on it?”

— Jay Crownover

“It seems to me that no matter whether you marry, settle down or live with a bird or not, certain ones simply have your number on them, like bombs in the war; and even if you don't happen to like them all that much there's nothing you can do about it - unless you're prepared to spend a lifetime arguing fate out of existence, which you could probably do if you tried but I'm not the type.
-Crust on Its Uppers, p. 87”

— Derek Raymond

“To be sure, you would like to live in a world where people in white hats bring people in black hats to justice, but you don't.
Don't let this discourage you, though. You can accept that life is unfair and still relish it. You aren't in total control of your life, but there is a nice big chunk of your life over which you have complete authority
beat that part to a pulp. Just remember the unfair nature of the world, the randomness of birthright, means people often suffer adversity and enjoy opulence through no effort of their own. If you think the world is just and fair, people who need help may never get it. Realize that even though we are all responsible for our actions, the blame for evil acts rests on the perpetrator and never the victim. No one deserves to be raped or bullied, robbed or murdered. To make the world more just and fair, you have to make it harder for evil to thrive, and you can't do this just by reducing the number of its potential targets.”

— David McRaney

“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.”

— Stonewall Jackson

“There's something I have to say," I said seriously, looking her in the eye.
She smiled. "Oookay." She was mocking me-mocking my tone-but I didn't care.
"Okay. Here it is. I love you," I said. "And I never, ever wanted to hurt you. It's like, the number one thing I never want to do, but somehow, I keep doing it. And I'm sorry, I just ... that's all I wanted to say all this time. All I was trying to do ... with that thing with your dad, not telling you ... was not to hurt you. And I'm sorry that I did.
Alley stared at me.
"And I'm sorry that I did it again. With the Chloe thing. Which was stupid. Like, really, really, stupid. And I-"
"Can you just stop, for a second?" Ally said, holding up a hand.
"What?" I said.
"Can you say the first part again?" she asked, rolling her fingers around for a rewind.
I racked my brain.
"Um ... I love you?" I said.
"That's the part, Cuz I love you, too.”

— Kieran Scott

“There are times when your heart may be so full that it seems as though it is going to break. It may be sorrow, anguish, frustration, guilt, anger-any number of feelings can build up within until you reach your breaking point. At these times you have a couple choices to make: you can either try to handle it yourself or you can turn to God. And in turning to God, you can either do so superficially, or you can do so deeply, with total honesty.”

— Linda Boone

“Randy is my gynecologist. I have had a number of gynecologists over the years, all talented in their own ways, but Randy is the best. He is an older Jewish man who, before deciding to inspect ladies down there for a living, played for the Mets. He still has the can-do determination of a pitcher on an underdog team and, to my mind, that is exactly the kind of man you want delivering your babies or rooting around in your vagina.”

— Lena Dunham

“I'm very pleased to be offered the job. I would love to work here, and I think I have a lot of to contribute. But I was hoping for $60,000." (That number allows him to find something in the middle that could still make you happy.) Then sit there with your lips tightly zipped. There's a more-than-decent chance that the person will make a counteroffer. If he says, "I can do that," great. If he offers $53,000, give it one more try. Say, "Is there any chance you can do a bit better?" He may say he'll have to get back to you. Remind him you'd love the job and tough it out (a frozen margarita that night can help!). When he comes back with $55,000 the next day, it will all be worth it. And if they insist you name a number? Be both realistic but generous to yourself, and add that you're open to discussion.”

— Kate White

“You ever drive up to the pharmacy window and they ask you, "Can I have your phone number?"
Sure all I get on it anymore are political calls, and people doing polls. Maybe it's difficult for people that work at pharmacy drive up windows to get phones.”

— Neil Leckman

“What the hell are you doing here again? (Terri)
I have a question. (Nathan)
Tell you what. I'll give you my cell phone number so you can just call me the next time you have one, and save you all the effort of breaking and entering. Free up a lot of your day. (Terri)”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that kinda shady Chinese restaurant and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it. You didn't know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye.”

— Colson Whitehead

“Nstead of Ralston saying any number of wonderful things that could have been appropriate for the precise situation in which they had found themselves -from You are the most unparalleled female I have ever known, to How can I ever live without you now that I've found heaven in your arms, to I love you, Callie, more than I had ever dreamed to even Shall we have another go?- he'd gone and mucked it up by apologizing.”

— Sarah MacLean

“I am a physicist, not a biologist. ...  But I am very much excited by your article in May 30th Nature, and think that brings Biology over into the group of "exact" sciences. ...  If your point of view is correct each organism will be characterized by a long number written in quadrucal (?) system with figures 1, 2, 3, 4 standing for different bases. ...  This would open a very exciting possibility of theoretical research based on combinatorix and the theory of numbers! ...  I have a feeling this can be done. What do you think?”

— James Gleick

“You found a pen?" "No, but I have a can of Cheez Whiz. I'll write your number on the counter with it, then find a pen and copy it.”

— Linda Howard

“One, can I have your number? Two, can I have your smile? Three, will you meet me somewhere? Four, will you stay awhile?”

— Brittainy C. Cherry

“I think a persons life is supposed to be like a DVD. You can see the version everyone else sees, or you can choose the directors cut-the way he wanted you to see it, before everything else got in the way. There are menus, probably, so that you can start at the good spots and not have to relive the bad ones. You can measure your life by the number of scenes you've survived, or the minutes you've been stuck there. Probably, though, life is more like one of those dumb video surveillance tapes. Grainy, no matter how hard you stare at it. And looped: the same thing, over and over.”

— Jodi Picoult

“If she possessed a genius-and a growing number of us think she did-it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed.”

— Chang-rae Lee

“We never want to go into a tour and play 15 songs and say 'Enjoy.' We have messages: Number 1, follow your dreams. If I can do it, you can do it. Number 2, give your life to something. We say, 'Volunteer and add seven years to your life.' You can have your own personal ministry. The message we have is 'What do you stand for?'”

— John Tesh

“In the last few years, we've learned that the formation and maintenance of categories have their roots in known biological processes in the brain. Neurons are living cells, and they can connect to one another in trillions of different ways. These connections don't just lead to learning-the connections are the learning. The number of possible brain states that each of us can have is so large that it exceeds the number of known particles in the universe. The implications of this are mind-boggling: Theoretically, you should be able to represent uniquely in your brain every known particle in the universe, and have excess capacity left over to organize those particles into finite categories. Your brain is just the tool for the information age.”

— Daniel J. Levitin

“It's not easy being number two. As a marketer, you have limited choices - you can pretend you're not defined by the market leader, or, you can embrace your position and go directly after your nemesis.”

— John Battelle

“The detox phenomenon is interesting because it represents one of the most grandiose innovations of marketers, lifestyle gurus, and alternative therapists: the invention of a whole new physiological process. In terms of basic human biochemistry, detox is a meaningless concept. It doesn't cleave nature at the joints. There is nothing on the "detox system" in a medical textbook. That burgers and beer can have negative effects on your body is certainly true, for a number of reasons; but the notion that they leave a specific residue, which can be extruded by a specific process, a physiological system called detox, is a marketing invention.”

— Ben Goldacre

“More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you'll just-have-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren't blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. "With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient-let's call her number seven-has a forty percent chance of survival." It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring.”

— Colin Cotterill

“It's often pretty hard to speak to others about my cancer. I have a number of pet peeves. Many folks are overly solicitous. They can't do enough for you. There's that Kaiser nurse who keeps asking "Isn't there someone who can drive you here?" And some people are too prying. I think they are voyeuristic and attempt to satisfy their morbid curiosity about having cancer. I don't like that and have sometimes wanted to say, "Go get your own damn fatal illness.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

“What is more natural than that a solidity, a complicity, a bond should be established between Reader and Reader, thanks to the book?
You can leave the bookshop content, you, a man who thought that the period where you could still expect something from life had ended. You are bearing with you two different expectations, and both promise days of pleasant hopes; the expectation contained in the book - of a reading experience you are impatient to resume - and the expectation contained in that telephone number - of hearing again the vibrations, a times treble and at times smoldering, of that voice, when it will answer your first phone call in a while, in fact tomorrow, with the fragile pretext of the book, to ask her if she likes it or not, to tell her how many pages you have read or not read, to suggest to her that you meet again ...”

— Italo Calvino

“Shiitake and reishi offer a diverse range of potential health benefits. You can take all of these supplements in perhaps eight to ten pills or capsules daily. If you take just three or four of these natural supplements at breakfast and the same number later in the day, you will have substantially increased your energy levels, boosted your immune system, lowered your risk of heart disease and cancer, and strengthened and balanced your overall system.”

— Mark Plotkin

“With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard.”

— John Cage

“In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.”

— Geoffrey Hinton

“I think the number one advice I can give is - you just have to start it. Just get your feet in the water and do it. I learned a lot from just trying it out.”

— Yoshikazu Tanaka

“When I'm acting, I have zero control, and it's the scariest thing anyone can do in that field because, you know, your face is always the one that's out there in front of the camera, and any number of things can happen to you once you've done your work. It can be edited badly, it can be distributed badly, or it can not be distributed at all. And I've certainly experienced that; every actor has.”

— Amber Tamblyn

“When you're running a company, you have employees - lots of them - that can interrupt your schedule. You have customers that can interrupt your schedule. You have a certain obligation to wave the flag because people expect to get out and wave the flag. The number of ways that others can command your time is high. At this stage, I get to pick and choose a little more. Not that there aren't some things that have to be done, but I get a little more control over my time.”

— Steve Ballmer

“No matter how many people are screaming your name or how many Number One hits you have, you can still wake up and feel like a loser.”

— Lady Gaga