“Five syllables," Apollo said, counting them on his fingers. "That would be real bad.”

“Can the ear hear a thirteen-syllable line as consisting of thirteen syllables? I don't think so, but I think that a series of thirteen-syllable lines (supposing that was the length chosen) would, after a while, begin to have a characteristic resemblance. For the most part, though, counting the syllables seems to be something that works, if it works, for the poet. It is a private method of organization.”

“Dreams like a podcast,
Downloading truth in my ears.
They tell me cool stuff."
"Apollo?" I guess, because I figured nobody else could make a haiku that bad.
He put his finger to his lips. "I'm incognito. Call me Fred."
"A god named Fred?”

“This creature, this Baab, with his spiritual weapons, was in the end found guilty on fifty-five counts of murder, on twenty-one counts of attempted murder, on thirty counts of assault and battery, and a variety of lesser offences.”

“Because I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don't want to miss any of them.”

“There are four things that make a man fight as you just did," the duke explained to Rumbold. "Love, despair, anger, or insanity."

Erik counted them off on his fingers. "Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone's taken it, or you've lost it.”

“Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”

“Five hundred souls.
I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I'd throw them over my shoulder. It was only the the children I carried in my arms.”

“You have not been sticking your dirty fingers in my sauce,’’ Eve said, and pointed her wooden spoon
at him.
He quickly took the finger out of his mouth. ‘‘First off, they’re not dirty. I licked them first.”

“The number of interviews I've ever given could be counted on the fingers of my hands.”