Unexpected Quotes - Page 27

• What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining." I’m glad Jay." Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Rain, Thinking, Grieving

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.69, Atlântico Press

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• Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways

  Jane Green

  Thinking, Work Out, Twists

  Jane Green (2006). “Swapping Lives”, p.10, Penguin

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• Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown?

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Elderly, Air

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.139, Virginia Woolf

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• Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

  Gloria Naylor

  Hurt, Memories, Glasses

  Gloria Naylor (2005). “The Women of Brewster Place”, p.35, Penguin

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• Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Fashion, Two, Mind

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• Having no other recourse, Roran resorted to the unexpected: he stuck his head and neck out and shouted, "BAH!" just as he would if he were trying to scare someone in a dark hallway.

  Christopher Paolini

  Dark, Trying, Scare

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• I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again — nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Lying, Thinking, Giving

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• Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Solitude, Looks, Elbows

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• Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word

  Brenda Ueland

  Believe, Hero, Ordinary

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• People sometimes make unexpected choices when they're lonely

  Jeanne Birdsall

  Lonely, People, Choices

  Jeanne Birdsall (2014). “The Penderwicks Collection: The Penderwicks, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, The Penderwick at Point Mouette”, p.123, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.

  Charles Dickens

  Night, Doctors, Two

  Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (2015). “Oliver Twist, Volume 2 (of 3) (Illustrations)”, p.48, RICHARD BENTLEY

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• If you claim to have a theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, let's see it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Principles, Theory, Claims

  David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky (2001). “Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky”, p.21, Pluto Press

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• We all have that moment in life when something terrible happens for the first time. Something so unexpected, so awful, that it takes the magic out of the world. Life becomes harder, colder. And everything we do in our lives, from that day on, is our way of coping with that one moment. We stop living and we merely exist. We either choose to move on from that, or we let it consume us.

  Robin Parrish

  Moving, Magic, World

  Robin Parrish (2007). “Relentless (Dominion Trilogy Book #1)”, p.199, Baker Books

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• Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I'd almost burst into tears. I'd seen many things in his eyes in the time that I'd known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this. Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it. I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Grief, Eye, Lust

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.1387, Dell

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• And then, as the room went black, I was suddenly hyperaware that Edward was sitting less than an inch from me. I was stunned by the unexpected electricity that flowed through me, amazed that it was possible to be more aware of him than I already was. A crazy impulse to reach over and touch him, to stroke his perfect face just once in the darkness, nearly overwhelmed me. I crossed my arms tightly across my chest, my hands balling into fists. I was losing my mind.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Crazy, Hands, Perfect

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• I think of how life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance, sometimes through calculated decisions. In the end, it can all be called fate, but to me, it is more a matter of faith.

  Emily Giffin

  Fate, Thinking, Decision

  Emily Giffin (2008). “Love the One You're With”, p.346, Macmillan

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• Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

  Elif Safak

  Love, Mean, Stories

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• And she did not want him to think her quite mad, only a little unique, only containing within her just that measure of the unexpected sufficient to make her irreplaceable.

  Rose Tremain

  Unique, Thinking, Mad

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• But there would be no confrontation the next day. And for Tommy Williams, there would be no school, either. Because the moment he walked through the gap in the stones to leave the circle, something quiet unexpected happened. Tommy, holding tightly on to his rock, took the step that divided the inside of the circle from the outside - and disappeared. The woods suddenly felt colder than usual. The darkness hung more heavily. The amber was gone - and now nothing would ever be the same.

  Liz Kessler

  School, Rocks, Circles

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• Hey, Ms. P," Tad called, "what's going on?" She let out a slow breath before she answered. "You won't believe this... Brian Murrey tried to eat Scott Morgan." Nick's eyes widened at the unexpected explanation. Had he heard that right?

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Believe, Eye, Hey

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2016). “Chronicles of Nick”, p.66, St. Martin's Griffin

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• What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Girl, Dolls, Peculiar

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• Saba: "You want this one to guide you?" Leia: "If you would consider it." Saba: "This one?" Leia: "Yes. I want someone who will challenge me in unexpected ways. I want someone who will teach me what I don't know.

  Troy Denning

  Challenges, Want, Way

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• You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop.

  Pablo Neruda

  Running, Waiting, Say Anything

  Pablo Neruda (1977). “Memoirs”

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• What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things.

  Shigeru Miyamoto

  Warrior, Thinking, Doors

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• All scholarship, like all science, is an ongoing, open-ended discussion in which all conclusions are tentative forever, the principal value and charm of the game being the discovery of the totally unexpected.

  Hugh Nibley

  Discovery, Games, Forever

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