Quotes About Surprise

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.

You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he's like, 'Yeah, yawn, I've done that.' You throw happiness at him? That's something that riles him; that's something that he's not used to.

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

I mean, you know, sometimes, yeah, you wish for something and you don't get quite what you wish for. But you get something bigger and better.

I got left for Mr. Bean. I found out a year after we split up. I opened the newspaper and there was a full-page story. No one else in the history of time has ever been left for Mr. Bean.

The designers usually don't like to say until we're on the runway. Like when I did Prada last year, I couldn't mention doing Prada or even Tweet or take a picture and put it on Twitter saying I was backstage at the Prada show. And Dolce was the same thing. They like to keep a little surprise, I guess, a little secret for everybody.

I got 'Reign In Blood' for Easter one year - how ironic is that?

Clearly, those of us women who play football wish that there was more coverage. But it's one of those things that happens. Every year the level is getting higher, and I think we surprise a lot of people when the world focuses its attention on the World Cup or the Olympics final.

After taking my B.A. degree in 1939 I remained at the University for a further year to take an advanced course in Biochemistry, and surprised myself and my teachers by obtaining a first class examination result.

I mean, that's another big surprise of the show, is that I see sixteen year old people who recognize me and they're honest, for-real fans of the show. And it goes down to nine months. I mean, I've heard of nine month to year-old children who are watching the show.

I think 'Speech & Debate' surprised people because it's a play about teenagers that took the teenagers very seriously. They are very real. People wanted to see if they identified with one of the kids, that loneliness, that yearning for something bigger. That feeling of being stuck, it's very adolescent, but those kinds of feelings linger on.

I played rugby for years, and I had a rugby jacket that I lost when I was 14. Somehow, my brother found it in storage 15 years later, and he gave it back to me for my 30th birthday. That was amazing and probably one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Never in a million years would I have imagined that this is how my life would have ended up. I just thought I would be living in the States, doing a regular job.

I never thought in a million years that I would do a weekly series.

My divorce came to me as a complete surprise. That's what happens when you haven't been home in eighteen years.

It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You'll have a nice time, then two years later you'll be like, 'There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?'

Isn't it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so we could discover them!

I really just like characters who you don't know where they stand for a long while. It's like people. You hang out with them for 10 years, and then all of a sudden they do something, and you say, 'Who are you?' That's more interesting. In life and on-screen.

Two years ago, if anyone had told me I'd be doing half the stuff I'm doing, I wouldn't have believed it.

I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.

If you'd have told me five years ago that I'd have done all this - two books, some television and everything - I'd panic, I'd be scared.

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.

We Americans, who invented traffic, are always being startled by the forms into which it has evolved around the world.

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.