Surprising Quotes - Page 21

• Death can sneak up on you like a silent kitten, surprising you with its touch and you have a right to act surprised. Other times death stomps in the front door, unwanted and unannounced, and makes its noisy way to your seat on the sofa.

  Hugh Elliot

  Death, Doors, Way

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• After appearing for eight seasons as a beloved character on 'Supernatural,' it's not surprising that I get most of my recognition on the street from that, and it happens with some frequency. But I'm not a guy who gets recognized often.

  Jim Beaver

  Character, Eight, Guy

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• I see all mythology as one tradition, a way of disseminating knowledge that must come to us in code so that we can live sanely with it, since some forms of knowledge are too dark, or too complex, to be plainly spoken. And so we have these weird (and also sometimes entertaining and surprising and heartening) tales that belong to all of us.

  Helen Oyeyemi

  Dark, Way, Sometimes

  "'Something Just Beyond Words'". Interview with Molly McArdle, logger.believermag.com. April 25, 2014.

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• Actually solving the puzzles in the book isn't going to improve anyone's writing, but "trying to solve the puzzle" is one way to think about what a lot of us - writers and other artists - do every day. Step one is to recognize the problem, step two is deciding what constraints you want to impose or respect, and step three is finding a pleasing/surprising/exciting solution.

  Peter Turchi

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Something to be shared". Interview with Reed Turchi, logger.believermag.com. November 11, 2014.

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• Students are very engaged by the issues, and it's not surprising because food choices are one of the few powers a child has.

  Michael Pollan

  Children, Issues, Choices

  Source: indianapublicmedia.org

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• My idea about collections is that you write as hard as you can for some period and what you're really doing during that time is hyper-focusing on the individual pieces - trying to make each one sit up and really do some surprising work.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Ideas, Trying

  Source: www.nationalbook.org

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• I think it's the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page

  John Updike

  Book, Thinking, Interesting

  John Updike, James Plath (1994). “Conversations with John Updike”, p.210, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Sometimes reactions can be quite surprising: readers like things that you, the author, feel you've barely gotten away with; or they dislike one of the parts you secretly think is one of your little gems.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Littles, Sometimes

  "Margaret Atwood Ruins a Marriage, Talks Memes, Politics in Reddit AMA". Interview with Jia Tolentino, jezebel.com. December 30, 2014.

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• There is a way of the Spirit unknown to the natural mind. No barrier can keep you from finding His best except an unyielded will. As long as it is your inmost desire to know the will of God and do it, He Himself will guide and direct in all sorts of surprising ways.

  Frances J Roberts

  Long, Mind, Desire

  Frances J. Roberts (2013). “Total Love”, p.53, Barbour Publishing

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• I came to writing mysteries through poetry and still think that a well-constructed mystery is very much like a well-constructed sonnet. Both are artificial forms. Both start off in one direction and then, with a twist of the concluding couplet/surprising ending, both reveal that they were headed somewhere different all the time.

  Margaret Maron

  Writing, Thinking, One Direction

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• And here's the surprising truth: As you gaze at yourself in the mirror held by another, you will see far more than your flaws. You also will see the beauty that is uniquely you; beauty that others see clearly and you may hardly know exists. That is also part of the truth about you.

  Steve Goodier

  Mirrors, May, Flaws

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• There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.

  Ben Hecht

  Death, Silence, Old Friends

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• 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.

  Wallace Shawn

  Jobs, Play, Giving

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I've never really taken myself seriously as an actor, It is surprising the amount of people who think I'm going to be really dumb. I think they think anyone who has done teen movies is just an idiot. I don't know, maybe I am. Some of the best actors, if you talk to them, they're not the smartest people in the world.

  Robert Pattinson

  Taken, Thinking, People

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• 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.

  Bill Nighy

  Fun, Mean, Play

  "Bill Nighy Interview - UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS". Roundtable setting, collider.com. August 18, 2008.

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• There's nothing surprising about me. I'm dull. I am a fan of the New York subway. I love it.

  Brian F. O'Byrne

  New York, Fans, Dull

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• Children do not see themselves as shocking or surprising and do not want other people to do so.

  Elizabeth Ferrars

  Children, People, Want

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• The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.

  Carol Bly

  People, Forever, Secret

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• Domestic work, is, after all, both tedious and repetitive, and it is not surprising that most women and all men avoid as much of it as possible.

  Mary Stocks, Baroness Stocks

  Men, Repetitive, Tedious

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• Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North.

  Peter Jennings

  Effort, Abiding, Littles

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• Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.

  Tim Harford

  Real, Book, Player

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• Even the great scientists have reported that their creative break-throughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking 'plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself'.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Thinking, Play, America

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.24, New World Library

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• There is a somewhat-surprising, somewhat totally predictable paucity of struggle in entertainment television. I do like being a part of a show featuring a family from a struggling socioeconomic strata.

  Lucas Neff

  Struggle, Television, Entertainment

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Jesus told parables. When he wanted to say something really profound about God, he went into parable. I don't find it surprising then that when earliest Christianity wanted to say something profound about Jesus, they went into parable too. That doesn't mean everything is a parable. When it says Jesus was in Nazareth I don't think that's a parable, I think Jesus was in Nazareth. When it talks about Jesus walking on the water, I don't think that's the point at all, I think the point is that the church without Jesus sinks.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Jesus, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy.

  John Turturro

  Real, Drama, House

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