Quotes About Surprise

What caught me by surprise were his eyes. They were a rich, warm brown in color, glowing with a joyful light that seemed to come from within himself.

Putting out crackers and cheese is reasonable when visitors show up with wine, but not when they arrive with cyanide.

How odd it was, Eleanor thought, to have grown children who've become people you don't really know.

She lifted her head, looked at me, and burped.

ASHLEY CARNARVON WAS TRYING TO DIG a single black sock out from under Eric Van Hoffendam's bed when he proposed. Which meant, given her position, hips in the air, feet wedged against the wall to give her leverage to reach the pesky sock, that he proposed to her butt.

I had believed I was coming to a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, and what I had discovered was a murder right in my bookshop and then a nest of vampires who ran a late-night book club.

So I would teach myself to live in constant uncertainty, moment by moment, step by step. I would live as if I were dead already. With nothing to lose, nothing could surprise me, nothing could stop me from fighting; my fears would not block me from following my instincts, and no risk would be too great.

It's a story about the stuff that happens just exactly when you weren't expecting it; just on that night you thought nothing was going to happen, everything happens.

Iris and I turn to the shooter at the same moment. "Oh my God," she breathes as she sees the small, defiant figure standing there in the threshold with his arm raised and his gun still aimed at the dead woman. "Max?

As for moral courage, it is very rare, he said, to find that kind found at 2 o'clock in the morning; that is to say, courage in the face of the unexpected.

I count upon taking [the French people] by surprise. A bold deed upsets people's equanimity, and they are dumbfounded by a great novelty.

Nothing is so contrary to military rules as to make the strength of your army known, either in the orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers.

A leader has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised.

Economic, financial, and political predictors… are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.

Remember that you are a Black Swan.

Open the ovoid mother and find the ovoid girl; open the child and the next egg grins up its invitation to crack it. You can never tell a priori how many iterations await you; you hope they continue forever. My daughter, my matryoshka.

Walking home from work that night, I stopped in the Centicore Bookstore on State Street and wandered up and down the aisles. I saw a thin volume of poetry entitled Fruits and Vegetables by Erica Jong. (Jong had not come out with her novel Fear of Flying yet and was still unknown.) The first poem I opened to in the book was about cooking an eggplant!

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.

Even if you know what's coming, you're never prepared for how it feels.

You're a big sister?' I was shocked. She seemed so good-natured and compassionate.

What else could have happened? Car wouldn't start? House caught on fire? Escaped convict climbed through his bedroom window and tied him with duct tape? Poison eggnog? Or maybe I just didn't matter to him.

When what to their curious eyes should loom, but a wicked old witch holding a broom. Her cape—how it shimmered! Her face—oh, how scary! Her hat was so pointy, it frightened the fairy! The wicked witch said, "Welcome. We have a surprise." And the children yelled, "Run! It's not a disguise!

Awfulness can happen at any time. That's what's so awful.

Over the weekend I have fallen in love with you again. I do not know why. Because it was wholly unnecessary.