Top 222 Surprising Quotes

Writers usually don’t get to pick our own covers. I know it’s surprising to hear that.

Bayern is a big club and a big brand, but on a daily basis, it’s a family club. You get to know the physios, the kit man, the chefs. It’s also a club that’s very close to the supporters. That proximity to the fans makes it special. That was surprising. In Liverpool and Madrid, there’s more distance.

The Italian character in general is full of animation, and the natives enter into the interests and welfare of the stranger before them with a fervor that forbids all doubt of its sincerity and that is truly surprising.

At the end of the day, the job is to tell the story that you promised to tell and do it in the most entertaining and perhaps surprising way you can think of.

But any big change is more likely to result if there is a disruptive event such as new technologies or platforms that have a surprising effect on market share.

The surprising thing about fatherhood was finding my inner mush. Now I want to share it with the world.

I have been told that I have been played at – my music’s been played at funerals, deaths, births, weddings. Weddings, I find very surprising.

Success and failure are equally surprising.

It was surprising how many kids don’t have lunches. If we all get behind this cause, it’ll help a lot of the kids out there who don’t really get enough food.

When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law – most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America – is really within living memory.

I always like surprising people and doing things at a young age and, I don’t know, trying to do them at a higher caliber than what you’d normally think. I’m not saying I’m a virtuoso, but I always challenge myself.

I was dealing with craft, and that’s the surprising thing, the number of people who have literally broken down on our stage, because when you’re talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they’re liable to feel something strong.

It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.

If you’re making a smaller movie, you’re almost obligated to do something unexpected and surprising.

It is surprising how many professional athletes, along with their families and friends, are gaga over movie and music stars, and the reverse is true with entertainers and sports stars.

Being a woman in control of a company – even a small private company, as ours was then – was so singular and surprising in those days that I necessarily stood out. In 1963, and for the first several years of my working life, my situation was certainly unique.

I know it might be surprising to some, but anyone who knows me – especially those who shared a changing room with me in my playing days who first told me I could sing – will tell you what a big fan I am of big band music.

I just like surprising people. I never want to get to a place where people see that I am in a movie and they go see the movie and they expect a certain performance one way or the other. That is just inherently boring to me.

It’s really surprising that what you put on paper, people will believe.

Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.

Let the novelists fret about consistency – story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.

It’s hard not to be the straight man when Zach Galifianakis is there. He’s such a delightfully bizarre creature. Everything he does is so surprising. He’s such a live wire. It’s just so exciting to watch.

Our music over the years has been very cinematic. It’s surprising we never really got into film soundtracks.

I had breathed in the atmosphere created by Henri Christophe, the monarch of incredible aims, much more surprising than all the kings invented by the surrealists.

It’s not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It’s nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?

I am ready to go super bold. I would like to thank not just my husband but even my in-laws, who have had no problems with my bold characters. You may find it surprising that we all discuss my scripts on the dining table.

What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a word’s setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that word’s full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise.

From being a writer of plays, it was not that surprising that somebody thought of giving me a job as an actor. After I played one part, others came along.

Modern technology gives us surprising glimpses into human development. It helps us plan for and celebrate new life.

Trump‘s behavior is deeply disturbing but hardly surprising. His mercurial nature is not the product of a post-inaugural adder sting at Mar-a-Lago. It’s been there all along. And the American electorate chose him nonetheless.

You meet people, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know how I feel about you,’ and someone does something surprising that changes your mind. We’re interesting creatures; we’re nuanced, complicated and layered, and we make all sorts of choices.

I don’t think you can be a good actor and want to please, because so much about performing and acting is surprising people.

When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

The death of marriage has been announced so often and would seem so normal, in a sense. So what’s surprising is the sheer longevity and tenacity of this institution.

I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead‘s going to do and then what the bad guy’s gonna do. Mostly it’s just scripts by the numbers where nothing‘s surprising, nothing’s interesting.

To find gratitude and generosity when you could reasonably find hurt and resentment will surprise you. It will be so surprising because you will see so much of the opposite: people who have much more than others yet who react with anger when one advantage is lost or with resentment when an added gift is denied.

A surprising number of people – including many students of literature – will tell you they haven‘t really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

I’ve been criticized because I’ve had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don’t find anything surprising about that.

I kind of put myself out there as is. I’m a quiet person. I don’t know if that’s surprising. I’m a Pilates junkie.

I’m relieved that after all these years of doing atrocity work, I still cry my eyes out every time I read the paper in the morning. It’s surprising, actually.

The majority of my UFO diet consists of reports describing suspected encounters. This is not surprising, as there are thousands of sightings annually. The emailer has seen something unusual in the sky that he interprets as probable evidence of alien presence.

Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history – as befits a former law professor – and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.

It may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The audience know what’s coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting.

Gertrude’s Secret’ is highly entertaining. Some of the monologues are very funny, some very surprising and some painful.

There’s a magical energy and power from the ocean. I was born in a room overlooking the sea, in the middle of a storm. Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that shores touch my soul. Science might disagree, but I think there’s a difference in the air on a coast – the positive ions, perhaps.

Innovation, surprising people and creating a sense of wonder is what consumers want.

We loved the original ‘Dynasty‘ – the camp and the big, surprising, soapy twists.

From the moment my dad died, from the moment I found out there was the possibility of his dying, there were many surprises – years after, minutes after. The moments I was okay were as surprising as the ones that I wasn’t. Making it through the eulogy without losing it. And then the guilt I felt about it. Surprise!

If the experience of science teaches anything, it’s that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.

What was especially surprising for me is that there are many people who view Sci-Hub as some kind of a tool to change the system. Like changing the system was a goal, and Sci-Hub was a tool to achieve it.

The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

I prefer ugly things. I prefer things which are surprising.

The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne’er do well, who they’d have to keep worrying about.

There is something, yeah, I mean traditionally it’s more fun to play bad guys than it is good guys and when you’re playing a bad guy, yeah, the fun in it is to see how scary you can be, how horrible you can be. And it’s surprising what you come up with.

Political consultants are pugilists, masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it’s surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more, well, positive.

Malaysia is a country unlike any other: Full of promise and fragility. Its history, cultural and religious diversity make it a rich, compelling and surprising land.

It wasn’t surprising to me because I’ve had the conversation with him personally, but Will Smith is more interesting a guy that you could ever capture in a movie or TV show.

I’m partial to epic poetry, which might be surprising given that I don’t write poetry at all. The combination of rollicking storytelling with musical language seems to me the highest achievement.

It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.

It has been surprising to me that so few conservatives have voiced concern over the precedence that are being set in favor of suppression by this so-called conservative administration.

Throughout my career, there has always been an element of surprise. Sometimes there are moments of disappointment; sometimes there are moments of surprising success.

On ‘EastEnders,’ if someone gets surprising news on the phone, the scene ends with them looking at their handset in amazement. No one in real life does that.

A surprising number of scientific advances have been made and masterpieces of art created by individuals just on the threshold of adulthood.

When thugs by nature meet thugs by political conviction, 5-0 is not surprising.

I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you’ve got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they’ll shock you by their behavior.

Browse Amazon reviews, and you’ll see a surprising number of readers who believe one novel can summarize a country, its culture, and its people.

What I have found most surprising is the amount of damage we have done to environment in the course of my lifetime – not even five and a half decades.

This may sound surprising for someone who works in Hollywood, but I do not count calories, and I don’t even care about weight gain, which I know sounds really bizarre. I listen to my body. I don’t just wake up in the morning and cook whatever I eat.

I like a show to unfold and keep presenting itself, surprising you.

I usually have a general idea of where the story is going, but I try to avoid planning in too much detail. The best endings are those that emerge only after I’ve thought long and hard about the various ways the story might end. Then I choose the ending that seems surprising yet somehow inevitable.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.

Humor connects us, especially in politics. It’s a way of surprising one another with shared context and experience.

In the novels I most admire, there is this sense that, within the confines of the world, the possibilities are always opening in new and surprising ways – that was a quality I strived to capture, with the hope that the reader would be willing to follow me.

As brands become larger, the need to reach greater numbers of customers makes them less edgy and dilutes their unique positioning as they try to please everyone. It is therefore not surprising to find such brands go into a few years of decline before they are able to reinvent themselves.

It’s all about surprising people, and you’re not surprising people if you’re making them laugh every five seconds.

The obvious objective of video games is to entertain people by surprising them with new experiences.

The surprising thing is when we met Judas Priest, they all recognized us. They knew our songs. They knew ‘Gimme Chocolate!’ and started dancing along with the music.

Illness can make us behave in the most surprising ways.

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that’s been given to them, and find some dignity.

Our supermarkets sell us horsemeat as beef, our politicians fiddle their expenses, and our bankers risk money that isn’t theirs. So it’s not surprising the public don’t trust anyone or anything.

It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves.

What’s interesting about playing Maura is that I get to use more of Jeffrey that I’ve ever used in any role, and I think that’s the remarkable part about it and truly the most surprising part about doing this role.

Somebody out there is going to do something that’s far more surprising than anything that I would do. I was surprised by the whole web thing in the first place.

What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

When it comes to the periodic table, the United States really blew its chance to make a name for itself. If you look over a map of all the elements named for cities, states, countries, and continents, it’s not surprising that European locales dominate the map.

Every word we speak calls on 37 muscles and thousands of nerves. It’s not surprising that sometimes these nerves and muscles fail us.

Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he’s very funny and very smart.

I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn’t surprising, since I can’t really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I’m watching the second half.

I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you’re working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

The phenomenon of Instagram poets – who are also, to be fair, Tumblr poets and Pinterest poets – has been one of the more surprising side-effects of the selfie age.

If tough old Lefty Helen Mirren can warm towards the Crown after impersonating Her Majesty, who’s next? Since reigning and acting have so much in common, it’s surprising all actors aren’t fervent royalists.

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

I think it’s surprising for a lot of people to see Jack Swagger crossover to MMA because they know Jack Swagger more than they know Jake Hager.

I’m pretty good at surprising friends and family with gifts. I tend to go towards the more sentimental side of giving.

Apparently only a third of us know our partners phone PIN, so the majority of people keep it secret. I find that really surprising, I think if my husband’s PIN was secret I’d be so suspicious of what he was hiding.

To whom, then, must I dedicate my wonderful, surprising and interesting adventures? to whom dare I reveal my private opinion of my nearest relations? the secret thoughts of my dearest friends? my own hopes, fears, reflections and dislikes? Nobody!

I don’t go up to guys. I’m all about a guy sending me flowers, getting me chocolates and surprising me.

Being a football manager is no fun at all. You have to put up with all the hassle. It is not surprising that so many turn grey or have heart attacks.

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.

The most surprising thing, honestly, is that so few Americans know about the orphan trains. I was also surprised at the resilience and fortitude of the riders I met, their pragmatism and grace. I don’t know whether this is a Midwestern trait or simply a human one.

This death sentence is not surprising. It had to be.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it’s our music. It’s the national music of America.

That’s what has always been so surprising for The Seekers – when you think they try to create pop stars in a contrived, manufactured way and we were just four people who just happened to meet and sing together.

The deployment of geolocating tags attached to ordinary garbage could paint a surprising picture of the waste management system, as trash is shipped throughout the country in a maze-like disposal process – as we saw in Seattle with our own Trash Track project.

When people watch ‘Power’ and they find out the showrunner is black, it’s not surprising. What is surprising is that I am a woman and my background is not particularly urban.

It’s a little surprising to me that I’m the first Houstonian to be an astronaut.

‘Planet Caravan‘ by Black Sabbath is such a delicate song from such a surprising place.

Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.

Feeling pummeled by the outside pounding of tests and standards, a teacher can easily hide and simply turn to the immediacy of the classroom. It is not surprising that many teachers burrow in their rooms with all that they know about their students. There is no place to take the information.

Don’t show off every day, or you’ll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

The case against Susan Rice has been building for years with little fanfare. Not surprising, the mainstream media reporters based at the U.N. have either ignored her mistakes or strategically covered them up.

If you swap it about, do television, theatre, film, you can go on surprising yourself. The problem is you get employed to do something you’ve already done. They want something from that sheep pen of performances they’ve seen you do.

I’ve always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it’s so surprising all the time – so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

I started out like any other model – I didn’t use my name as leverage. I went out with a portfolio and pounded the pavement and it was surprising how many people wouldn’t see me because I was too short.

I think that diversity in your performances is what keeps you alive as an actor. You have to keep constantly evolving and surprising the audience and showing them that you can do things they didn’t expect you to do.

A surprising amount of my jokes sound very implausible but are true.

I’m very spiritual. I meditate every day. I don’t know if that’s surprising or not, but I’ve been doing that since I was 16 every day, so that’s like kind of my thing. I’m really a hippie-chick at heart.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it’s not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It’s not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers.

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.

The opportunity to build new and surprising partnerships to help Microsoft succeed in a mobile-first, cloud-first world is truly exciting, and I look forward to leading these efforts.

Drogba is certainly one of the best strikers in the world and has gone to Galatasaray after his experience in China, with the desire to keep surprising.

I don’t think most of my hobbies would be surprising to anybody. I obviously like to spend a lot of time with my family. I like to train. I like to lift.

Anytime a guy gets traded at midseason – a young player – it’s surprising.

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

The surprising thing is that I was not funny in high school. I was always jealous of the funny kids because they always got the girls. I couldn’t tell a joke to save my life.

My father has developed a tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress. He buys a new costume each year and typically gets carried away. A couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit. It’s endearing, really, and only quite embarrassing.

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

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, it’s just a part of being a girl in 2013.

I’m kind of under the radar. Not a lot of people notice me. Which is surprising, because I’m so sexy. They’re probably intimidated by my sexiness and crushability.

I think new plays are vastly more surprising and challenging and inspiring; I hear from audiences all the time that they are delighted when they see plays about the world we live in now, at this moment.

At the Grammys, how many performances were with women playing instruments? Is it still surprising that a female can play an instrument proficiently?

There’s something rhythmic about running, so it’s not surprising that I love it. I’m a bass player, after all.

Well, the surprising factor was that in general ‘Creed‘ was like a real-life movie even though you know its boxing and fighting but thats part of real-life as well.

I lost a lot. It was almost like I was a retired player where I lost all of my athleticism. I lost everything. Being able to get it back, step by step, little bit at a time, it was like surprising myself.

Donald Trump has been president for nearly three years. He’s been on Twitter for more than 10. Yet the only thing more surprising than Trump’s increasingly awful, hideously unpresidential, deeply divisive tweets is that we still manage to be surprised by them.

Surprising people is the key to career longevity for someone like me.

If I’m in a relationship, I’m 1,000% in it. I love doing things for them and surprising them. And that’s just something I thoroughly enjoy and it gives me a lot of pleasure. I just haven’t found that right girl yet.

One question we’ll ask is, ‘Who are you grateful for,’ and a surprising number of people can’t name anyone beyond their mother.

Dad is a really surprising guy. Every time I think he’s going to be useless, he ends up doing something amazing and saying exactly the right thing.

I can tell you one of the most surprising ingredients I’ve ever found. Perhaps five years ago on a beach I saw this herb that looked exactly like chives. I put it in my mouth and started chewing and, surprise, it tasted exactly like coriander.

I keep surprising myself with films like ‘Mission Kashmir,’ ‘Albela,’ ‘Farz,’ and ‘Bas Itna Sa Khwaab Hai.’ All the roles are very different.

You can analyse a joke and say it’s funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it’s surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.

It’s surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.

At its best, alt comedy can be challenging, surprising, and innovative. And at its worst, alt comics think that being awkward.com/FAQS is a substitution for punchlines.

I want to constantly be surprising people with different roles.

I’ve been playing both sides of the law my entire career. It’s not really surprising for me to be doing opposing sides simultaneously. I would argue that even though my character on ‘Hawaii Five-0′ originated on the wrong side of the law, I’d say he’s worked his way over to the good side.

Rather than highlighting music’s differences, Kids & Explosions’ Josh Raskin mixes songs together based on their surprising common ground, making them blend rhythmically and melodically.

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.

I don’t intentionally make my films with the express goal of surprising the viewer.

The idea for any film is always going to be surprising or unusual.

Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.

I love Broadway. And, I listen to country music, which I think a lot of people find surprising.

Every two weeks on ‘Doctor Who,’ the set is completely different, the world is different and there are new actors coming in. So, it’s constantly surprising, and it’s a pressure that you relish, actually.

I’ve been boxing ever since I was 16. I love surprising people who think a short, blond girl can’t fight! Just because I look a certain way doesn’t mean I’m weak.

It’s weirder and more surprising than the other books. I think there are more places where it’s just more reality bending, deliberately so. I think it’s a lot more emotionally raw.

Look at what has occurred in history. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was not surprising, but it was unexpected. Who predicted the Arab Spring? Nobody expected it, but all the ingredients were there. I think all the ingredients are also there for Quebec to become a country. But when? That’s another question.

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn’t what I was after at all.

I’m a great admirer of ‘The Simpsons.’ It’s very surprising because it’s backed by a right-wing television company in the U.S., and quite often it’s poking fun at the people who would be its audience.

I’m a full-contact actor, meaning that I love to act in my toes and in my fingers, and I just try to keep it surprising.

If somebody is excited to cast me in a character that is surprising even for me to play, that is something I’ll be looking for.

The tension I feel is the moment they say, ‘Action!’ Movies are like lightning in a bottle, and you always want to find when you possibly can catch a surprising moment.

It’s actually very surprising how little we think about the quality of our decision-making and how we could improve it. How absent decision-making classes are from educational curricula. How little we think about how it is we think.

Every one of our greatest national treasures, our liberty, enterprise, vitality, wealth, military power, global authority, flow from a surprising source: our ability to give thanks.

Much of the time in the writer’s room is spent working on story, and I was always challenging myself to make it more interesting, tighter and more surprising: to come at it sideways in a way that the audience wasn’t expecting.

Language, philosophy, and science are interwoven into the design of words, which are manipulated to create surprising illusions.

I’ve run a marathon – I think that’s the most surprising thing about me.

The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have – by disrupting that order – a way of surprising.

I got the most surprising reaction was when I had bleached blonde hair with a black stripe at the bottom – all of the ends were black. That one got the most attention – good and bad.

Everyone seems to be surprised that I’ve changed post-marriage. But what’s so surprising about it? You must change; it’s such a big turning point in your life.

In Canada, there’s a surprising worship of managerialism versus ownership and wealth creation. There’s a real problem in this country with believing that management is the answer to our problems.

I have had a struggle with anxiety, always, and as a proud Jew, that’s not a surprising thing.

I think my job is to deliver the best, most cinematic, rich, exciting, surprising and emotional version of ‘Camelot.’

Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that’s what the camera loves the most. That’s what is great about film.

Richard Schiff is a really good baseball player. It’s surprising because he looks exhausted.

‘The Odyssey‘ is a great poem to refugee-dom… Odysseus is not entirely a refugee… he’s somebody who’s blown off course. The entire book is an exploration of that theme… I reread it every year… That’s not as surprising as it sounds, because it’s a rip-roaring book.

My children just want to get at the world; it is so pleasantly surprising to witness that.

When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated.

Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian’s relationship with God. It’s how we communicate and fellowship with Him. But a surprising number of people, young and old, new and even long-time Christians, say they’re not satisfied with their prayer life.

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don’t want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.

I’d like to think I’m ambitious, and I like proving people wrong and surprising people.

I’m not a good gift-giver, other than the fact that I like surprising people. I usually give what people ask for but I try to make it seem like I’m not buying it.

I collect chairs and lights, which obviously means I want to sit in the light – not surprising for an actor I suppose.

I enjoy the beauty of the bubble, they’re fluid and yet they have these geometric shapes so they do surprising things – two spheres become a single sphere – it’s what bubbles do.

I think that I was the first MP to call for the nationalisation of Northern Rock, although that is hardly surprising because I have been calling for the nationalisation of the financial sector for 30 years or more.

I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.

I tend to stay in character between scenes… to be rather serious on set, but here’s why, and I think people will find it surprising. I’m one of the worst ‘corpses’ on a movie set, which means you can’t keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can’t stop.

I’m first and foremost a company man, surprising as that is. I love Warner Brothers. That’s where I have a deal. That’s where I’ve been for years. So I don’t really interact too much with other studios and do things with other studios and I don’t necessarily read scripts from other studios.

I know it’s surprising, but there is a generation of people who haven’t seen a Bond movie. They have no idea what it is. I want to entertain them as much as anyone else.

Most people know me from ‘The Office,’ where I played a guy who grunted out three or four words an episode and was kind of a knucklehead, and so I think it’s surprising for people to see me do something like this. But Shakespeare is what I grew up wanting to do.

Yes, there was a sort of underground cult following, which came from nowhere, and grew, and grew. It was quite surprising to us all, because all of us had spent probably the previous five to ten years without it. So it was quite overwhelming. Overwhelming and humbling.

I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She’s so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well.

I like to do things that are surprising and different.

I watch the Premier League every weekend. I think it’s fantastic. One thing you notice is that the teams considered small are capable of surprising the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United and City.

Some of the pictures in ‘The Human Face of Big Data‘ will bring tears to your eyes; others are so surprising or memorable that you just have to show them to your friends and family.

I like surprising my audiences, and it’s compulsory to have fun and be silly; I never take myself quite too seriously.

I love surprising the fans.

It’s not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven’t dealt with it.

I like clothes that feel fresh and surprising.

Every country has its own perspective on the Second World War. This is not surprising when experiences and memories are so different.

I think the most surprising thing about the Olympics would be the amount of interaction and partying that goes on behind the scenes. They have nightclubs at the Olympic Village. It’s like college all over again.

It was very hard to make ‘Funny Face’ in Paris because making movies is difficult and making a movie in a city that was glorious, that was unique and surprising, to get it, to put it on film you have to make choices and reject a lot of things so you’re always wondering: ‘Am I doing it right?’

The characters in a novel are made up, figments of the writer’s imagination. I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to anyone, and it’s not surprising to me either, but knowing this, feeling this, definitely made writing my second book harder.

It’s not so surprising that there are more women in metal bands. And they’re not just fronting them. There are drummers and guitar players, bass players.

It’s surprising how you can behave like a 16-year-old in your 60s, or a 17-year-old in your 70s. You know, it’s exactly the same. You fall in love with somebody, you start worrying why the phone is not ringing and thinking, ‘Can I ring him?’

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.

As a reporter in Israel, I have interviewed hundreds of people in its intelligence and defense establishments and studied thousands of classified documents that revealed a hidden history, surprising even in the context of Israel’s already fierce reputation.

I didn’t know who my daddy was until I was 10 or 12. Surprising as it may seem, he was living right across the street.

If the truth be told, we are a society that is dripping in racism. This is not in the least surprising. For the best part of two centuries, we British ruled the waves, controlled two-fifths of the planet, and believed it was our responsibility to bring civilisation to those who allegedly lacked it.

I think that London is very much like that. I find there’s humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it’s a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn’t into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I’m still surprising people.

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience.

Professional players work almost every day, for hours on end, and the emphasis is on the word ‘work.’ It can be with a partner or it can be alone, but professional chess is always a pursuit of something new and surprising.

I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don’t make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn’t work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.

I hadn’t looked at all the Nobel Prizes and thought, my goodness, there’s no women. So it was a little bit surprising to me.