Quotes About Surprise

It was a slap-splash, a fleshy belly-flop sound, like the fin of something large in these waters, surfacing briefly to wave at the stars.

Pardon my French for a second, Chief, but what the fuck?

My water broke.

Those who are comfortable taking chances know that the best way to grow is to reach beyond their grasp. Their sense of direction comes from the heart. They don't shy away from surprise; they might even seek it out. And they seldom die with regrets. In the end we regret not what we have done but what we have not done.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

I never would've thought seeing a hundred naked people around a swimming pool would have been dullsville, but it is.

A waitress had come out of nowhere. "What can I get you?" ?I looked around the table, only to realize that everyone was staring at me. ?"Uh... five... beers?" ? "Five beers." ?"Yup!" ?"Any particular kind?" ?"…good ones?" ? "Can I see your ID?" ? "Goddammit." I handed it over.

There's only one principle of war and that's this. Hit the other fellow, as quick as you can, and as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain't lookin."3

At the brunch, I told her I had been in Alaska a few months earlier. And she opened her mouth wide in a look of genuine surprise, as if no one had ever gone to Alaska before. "Why didn't you look me up?" she said, again sounding sincere. I made a joke about not wanting to get shot. She made me promise to look her up in Wasilla next time. (How does one "look up" Sarah Palin in Alaska, anyway? Is she listed? Can we become texting buddies?)

The practice continues throughout the country. Immigrants can feel "on the border" almost anywhere in the territory of the U.S., and have been subject to such raids in many Northern cities. The key is surprise and drama, especially sudden unexpected violence, or simply the threat of it, which instills wariness and unease in whole immigrant families as they come to and from work. In

Python's super is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you're going to get!

No, that watch doubles as a high-power flame-thrower and a bidet.

I sometimes surprise myself when one of my characters says something I would never say.

The first part, the setup, sets the stage. The second half, the punch line, provides an unexpected ending. It's the surprising conclusion that causes laughter.

Humor comes out of the unexpected: If there's no surprise, there's no laugh. In a triple, as discussed in chapter seven, the first two lines are often straight lines; this is the realistic element. The third line is the surprise twist—logically related to the first two lines, but unexpected and exaggerated. Realism is the setup, while exaggeration is the joke. "Get your facts first," wrote Mark Twain, "and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Clever wordplay engenders grudging appreciation in your peers, but surprise wordplay gives birth to laughter. We smile at wit. We laugh at jokes.

The penis, when you pull the underwear down, it's like a drunk friend just falling out of a car. —Jo Koy

A joke is a curve ball—a pitch that bends at the last instant and fools the batter. "You throw a perfectly straight line at the audience and then, right at the end, you curve it. Good jokes do that," Burrows said. To achieve the unexpected twist, it's sometimes necessary to sacrifice grammar and even logic.

Since it appears that exaggeration is the logical antithesis of realism, it may seem ludicrous to have both within the framework of one piece of humor. But good humor is a paradox—the unexpected juxtaposition of the reasonable next to the unreasonable—and that creates surprise. Think

The language-based portion of the brain (the left frontal cortex) "gets" the joke by recognizing the ambiguity, incongruity, and surprise of the humor. The emotional areas of the brain (such as the amygdala) appreciate the humor and trigger laughter.

Didn't that just figure? One of the most

You know, my young friend, I will be ninety years old next year, and life is still a constant surprise to me. We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

I couldn't believe it. That was the first time I had ever seen somebody celebrate for a whole 40-second clock. That was ridiculous.