Surprising Quotes - Page 26

• I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.

  William Monahan

  Thinking, People

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My images don't come close to real life. The world is remarkable, astounding and surprising that one does not need to exaggerate. What actually exists is simply insane.

  Duane Hanson

  Real, Insane, Doe

  39 Copy quote

• You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Frustration, Gun

  73 Copy quote

• I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

  Mary Schmich

  Mother, Sibling, Grief

  Mary Schmich (2012). “The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Chicago Tribune's Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary”, p.28, Agate Digital

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've recommended girls for jobs that I had a different part in, and agents have been like, "No, don't ..."It's so surprising to me.

  Winona Ryder

  Girl, Jobs, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• New York is vibrant, sexy, naughty, always surprising, and has great live music and great fashion.

  David Harewood

  Sexy, Fashion, New York

  4 Copy quote

• The editor needs to put his own life on hold for the better of the magazine, the crew, and the readers. And to have a bigger vision of the magazine's style and an understanding that every [issue] should be well-balanced and hopefully surprising. To have a pink wall with a door of perception where he can bang his head on.

  Toni Jerrman

  Wall, Issues, Doors

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It should be possible to say that there really is such as thing as "genius" and that what it is, is precisely a surprising and unexpected movement away from collective patterns of behavior and received wisdom.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Genius, Movement, Patterns

  12 Copy quote

• Surprise is the essence of humor, and nothing is more surprising than truth.

  Bill Watterson

  Essence, Surprise

  11 Copy quote

• There isn't much political coloration in my economic writing; it's not surprising that few people know my political views. They really aren't very important.

  Christopher A. Sims

  Writing, Views, People

  4 Copy quote

• The poems in Katherine Soniat's new collection, The Swing Girl, weave emotion's 'spray going farther than thought' with the 'bedrock things' of the trod-upon world. These poems eddy and pool in unpredictable and often surprising ways, much as the mind moves in its twilight state between waking and sleep. The fluidity of their cadence and the luminosity of their imagery carry the reader to the wellspring of poetry itself, that deep delight of which Robert Penn Warren spoke, whose source is, in Soniat's words, 'beauty on its way to being mystery.'

  Kathryn Stripling Byer

  Girl, Moving, Twilight

  4 Copy quote

• Psychiatry's a young science. Yesterday's madman may be tomorrow's genius. Beethoven and Van Gogh were both a bit loopy. In my view, most madmen are remarkable. They're explorers, travelers beyond the rim of consciousness. Not surprising if they pick up a few bugs and get sick. That's all it is, madness. Mad just means sick. If you get fluid on the lungs it's pleurisy. If it's fluid on the brain, it's insanity.

  Clare Boylan

  Depression, Mean, Yesterday

  44 Copy quote

• The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

  Bill Gates

  Success, Engineering, Ideas

  "One-on-One with Bill Gates". Interview with Peter Jennings, abcnews.go.com. February 16, 2005.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising. ...I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and people will be like, 'Oh, this person isn't a true feminist because they don't embody this one thing,' and I don't know, often there is a lot of gray area that can be hard to navigate.

  Lorde

  Girl, Fashion, Reading

  "Super Heroine: An Interview With Lorde". Interview with Tavi Gevinson, www.rookiemag.com. January 02, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.

  Christine Jennings

  Ideas, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

  E. M. Forster

  Character, Curves, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.

  William Hardy McNeill

  Wisdom, Islamic, Example

  "Keeping Together in Time". Book by William Hardy McNeill, Ch. 4: Religious Ceremonies, 1995.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.

  George Carlin

  People, Quality, Different

  12 Copy quote

• I think her Grandmother Hall gave her a great sense of family love, and reassurance. Her grandmother did love her, like her father, unconditionally. And despite the order and the discipline - and home at certain hours and out at certain hours and reading at certain hours - there was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn't censored.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Father, Book, Reading

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.

  Chad Harbach

  Notebook, Running, Block

  4 Copy quote

• I do dark [humor]. I like people who are silly and weird and people who are surprising and good at what they do.

  Anthony Jeselnik

  Silly, Dark, People

  "Anthony Jeselnik on roasting, ripping off Jack Handey, and giving the devil his own TV show". Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. March 12, 2013.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• God's unique capacity is too surprising to surprise.

  Emily Dickinson

  God, Unique, Surprise

  Emily Dickinson (2012). “Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.367, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even the greatest actions of a celebrated person labor under this disadvantage, that however surprising and extraordinary they may be, they are no more than what are expected from him.

  Joseph Addison

  May, Action, Notoriety

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.279

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sarah Cornwell has a brilliant eye for the telling detail, and a wonderfully original way of embodying family history. I was captivated by her memorable characters and the perfectly paced revelations of their surprising relationships.

  Andrea Barrett

  Memorable, Character, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• God uses sorrowful tragedy to set the stage for surprising triumph-whether in this life or the life to come.

  David Platt

  Tragedy, Triumph, Use

  4 Copy quote