Quotes About Surprise

Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, I wonder what he's like. Then you meet him, and think, There must be some mistake. She can't have preferred this to me!

She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.

Good God, Clarence! You look like a bereaved tapeworm.

Angela nearly got inhaled by a shark while aquaplaning.

you ever have that feeling when you step down onto a footstep that isn't there?

Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

Bream Mortimer was tall and thin. He had small bright eyes and a sharply curving nose. He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do. It gave strangers a momentary shock of surprise when they saw Bream Mortimer in restaurants, eating roast beef. They had the feeling that he would have preferred sunflower seeds.

She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband's eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says: 'Guess who!

I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare – or, if not, some equally brainy bird – who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneakes up behind him with a bit of lead piping

I shuttered from hairdo to shoe-sole

I was back at the flat so quick that I nearly met myself coming out.

Little as he knew of women, he was aware that as a sex they are apt to be startled by the sight of men crawling out from under the seats of compartments.

A hoarse shout from within and a small china ornament whizzing past my head informed me that my old friend was at home.

I don't know anything that braces one up like finding you haven't got to get married after all.

i gave a start as if goosed from behind

I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.

You never know what is waiting for you around the corner. You start the day with the fairest prospects, and before nightfall everything is as rocky and ding-basted as stig tossed full of doodlegammon.

If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one.

No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour of passion, likes to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.

I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something. So that it was a bit of an anti-climax when I merely ran into young Bingo Little, looking perfectly foul in a crimson satin tie decorated with horseshoes.

How would this do you, Bingo? I said at length. A few plovers' eggs to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold salmon, some cold curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and cream with a bite of cheese to finish? I don't know that I had expected the man actually to scream with delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his pet dishes, but I had expected him to say something.

In the past she had been compelled to describe this man as a hunk of cheese and to express the opinion that his crookedness was such as to enable him to hide at will behind a spiral staircase; but now, in the joy of this unexpected reunion, all these harsh views were forgotten.

There was something about this girl that made the most bizarre happenings seem right and natural. Ever since he had met her his life had changed from an orderly succession of uninteresting days to a strange carnival of the unexpected, and use was accustoming him to it.

I felt as if I had stepped on the place where the last stair ought to have been, but wasn't.