The Unexpected Quotes

Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don't waste time. Don't figure out how or why it happened. Don't recriminate. Don't figure out whose fault it is. Don't work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive.
- Lee Child

There's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.
- Cecelia Ahern

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
- Paulo Coelho

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.
- Heraclitus

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
- W H Auden

One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected.
- Norman Ralph Augustine

Isn't it the unexpected that teaches us the most?
- Marwa Ayad

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
- Oscar Wilde

Hey, Ms. P," Tad called, "what's going on?"
She let out a slow breath before she answered. "You won't believe this... Brian Murrey tried to eat Scott Morgan."
Nick's eyes widened at the unexpected explanation. Had he heard that right?
- Sherrilyn Kenyon

No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.
- Lynda Barry

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.
- Charles Baudelaire

What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all its poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes.
- Charles Baudelaire

A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.
- Arnold Bennett

Don't you agree? Swordplay is a dance of sorts, an understanding of the logical, most sophisticated next step. Except that in a fight, one must take the unexpected step. In dance it is all about taking the right, expected step.
- Lisa Tawn Bergren

Being positive reckons the unexpected.
- Toba Beta

Well I'm still working on The Incredibles. So I'm going to take a little time off. I've got a couple of tricks up my sleeve. I'm not ready to talk about them yet, but expect the unexpected.
- Brad Bird

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
- Alain De Botton

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.
- Alain De Botton

{In the shadows where the ancestors sleep, the bird's song is young, but all else is old. Stillness surrounds me and I breathe softly expecting the unexpected.} from book in progress
- Nancy B Brewer

It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is something extra, the unexpected return.
- Pearl S Buck

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
- George Bernard Shaw

Sometimes the unexpected is way more exciting.
- Laura Burks

There are no absolutes in relationships. You can't take anything for granted. You can count on absolutely nothing but the unexpected. You only get in trouble when you start thinking that you're some kind of exception to the rule.
- Emily Giffin

Which death is preferably to every other? "The unexpected".
- Julius Caesar

Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players.
- Deb Caletti

It's fun playing two roles. The roles provide a wonderful range of emotions. Stuart is childlike and sensitive. Adam is ruthless, outrageous. He's flamboyant. He does the unexpected.
- David Canary

We are to make a plan for the day, pray over that plan, and then proceed with that plan. When we are willing to regard the unexpected as God's intervention, we can flex with the new plan, recognizing it as God's plan.
- Elizabeth George

its fun to do the unexpected.
- Walt Disney Company

Expect the unexpected in life, love, religion, politics and many more such drivers for humanity. These will ask you to fight and you need courage to fight them.
- Santosh Kalwar

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
- Kurt Vonnegut

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.
- Robert Doisneau

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.
- Arthur Conan Doyle

Experiment! Meet new people. That's better than any college education... By adventuring; about, you become accustomed to the unexpected. The unexpected then becomes what it really is... the inevitable.
- Amelia Earhart

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.
- Chuck Jones

The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.
- Chuck Jones

As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
- Viktor E Frankl

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.
- James Patterson

Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of _Apollo_. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.
Travel is broadening. It's time to hit the road again.
- Carl Sagan

In an age in which the classic words of the Surrealists - "As beatiful as the unexpected meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella" -
can become reality and perfectly achievable with an atom bomb, so too has there been a surge of interest in biomechanoids.
- H R Giger

Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don't exist.
- Adam Gopnik

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.
- Tom Robbins

Most people want to be circled by safety, not by the unexpected. The unexpected can take you out. But the unexpected can also take you over and change your life. Put a heart in your body where a stone used to be.
- Ron Hall

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.
- Pam Houston

We have to pay close attention to what we see, and be ready to work with the unexpected according to the basic principles of systems biology and medicine.
- Mark E Hyman

Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience.
- Masaru Ibuka

Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
- Norton Juster

The one thing we can all be sure about in politics is you are as well to expect the unexpected.
- Charles Kennedy

To be honest, I had been restless...The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor--the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.
- Sue Monk Kidd

One cannot plan for the unexpected.
- Aaron Klug

All creative people want to do the unexpected.
- Hedy Lamarr

Pleasure to me is wonderthe unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.
- H P Lovecraft

We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.
- Charles De Lint

Expect the unexpected, my mother once said. Because the unexpected most certainly will be expecting you.
- Marjorie M Liu

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
- John Locke

It's especially important since September 11 for people to be trained for the unexpected. We want to try to make sure people are safe.
- Michael Malone

I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before.
- Robert Mapplethorpe

Charm is a product of the unexpected.
- Jose Marti

Do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day, do what young people all over the world are dying to do: vote.
- Rick Mercer

I was stunned by the unexpected electricity that flowed through me, amazed that it was possible to be more aware of him than I already was. A crazy impulse to reach over and touch him, to stroke his perfect face just once in the darkness, nearly overwhelmed me.
-Bella
- Stephenie Meyer

And then, as the room went black, I was suddenly hyperaware that Edward was sitting less than an inch from me. I was stunned by the unexpected electricity that flowed through me, amazed that it was possible to be more aware of him than I already was. A crazy impulse to reach over and touch him, to stroke his perfect face just once in the darkness, nearly overwhelmed me. I crossed my arms tightly across my chest, my hands balling into fists. I was losing my mind.
- Stephenie Meyer

It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day.
- Toni Morrison

He leans forward seriously. "Bliss. At work and at play, let safety lead the way."
Of course," I say. "Silly me."
Danger never takes a vacation."
That's right. Expect the unexpected."
And never, never -"
Yes?"
He wags his finger. "Check a gas tank with a lighted flare."
A laugh snorts out. "Good to know.
- Lauren Myracle

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop..
- Pablo Neruda

Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.
- Patrick O Brian

Having no other recourse, Roran resorted to the unexpected: he stuck his head and neck out and shouted, "BAH!" just as he would if he were trying to scare someone in a dark hallway..
- Christopher Paolini

The unexpected thing, the miraculous thing, is when a car that's been shattered in a crash, that's been left in the rain to rust for years at a time, can be coaxed to growl to a start and slowly begin rolling down the hill.
- Carolyn Parkhurst

The shortest period of time lies between the minute you put some money away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain.
- Jane Bryant Quinn

At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different.
- Arthur Rubinstein

I think my mother... made it clear that you have to live life by your own terms and you have to not worry about what other people think and you have to have the courage to do the unexpected.
- Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
- George Soros

Americans' addiction to sports, with the NFL at the top, is based on the excitement generated by the potential for the unexpected great play which can only happen with honest competition from great athletes.
- Arlen Specter

When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.
- Helen Thomas

There is something about the unexpected that moves us. As if the whole of existance is paid for in some way, except for that one moment, witch is free.
- Rose Tremain

And she did not want him to think her quite mad, only a little unique, only containing within her just that measure of the unexpected sufficient to make her irreplaceable.
- Rose Tremain

What I can't understand is why the silly things you say makes so much sense."
"I'll tell you why," said Papa Dima. "It's because the best idea is the idea you least expect. And the unexpected always seems silly at first.
- Eduard Uspensky