Astonishing Quotes

Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don’t care who does that astonishing.

Without Ataturk’s vision, without his ambition and energy, without his astonishing boldness in sweeping away traditions accumulated over centuries, today’s Turkey would not exist, and the world would be much poorer.

Bell Labs was an astonishing place for many decades, though it fell on somewhat hard times during the telecom meltdown some years ago, as its corporate owner had to cope with shrinking markets.

I can’t see myself doing something as astonishing as jumping of a chopper. I find it stupid.

McQueen is an astonishing film maker. He uses really unusual shots and builds incredible dramatic tension.

Under these conditions it is not astonishing that learning was highly prized; in fact, my parents made sacrifices to be able to give their children a good education.

Any urbanist has to appreciate New York City and the way it works. The public transit is astonishing.

President Trump not only lies with astonishing temerity and abandon, but those lies connect into equally false narratives that gin up the worst fears and prejudices of his base.

I speak pretty fluent American, though I do so with a strong British accent, and I love America: The scale and the variety of it are astonishing to someone not born there, and I’m convinced that its energy and generosity have somehow rubbed off on me and affected my writing. For the better.

Nobody knows anything. I deal with people in all walks of life, some of whom should have some idea of what they’re doing. And they’re all clueless. It’s astonishing that any bridges stay up, or that planes don’t constantly plummet from the sky. It’s heartening, in a strange way.

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It’s astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.

I’m very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I’m a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was – everyone knew each other.

My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.

We undervalue food in this country, yet Britain has beautiful food and beautiful growing conditions. It is astonishing the range we can grow.

It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms.

I’ve had hundreds of requests from journalists all over the world asking me to speak about Leicester, which is astonishing. It’s captured the imagination.

I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you’re struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.

Many years ago, I think I got my first insight on how an incredibly diverse team can work together and do astonishing things, and not just misunderstand each other and fight.

Beyonce moves a lot. She’s astonishing, dances and sings at the same time. She is buff.

The Okavango Delta is an astonishing sight: the great Okavango River, rather than flow towards the sea, flows inland, into the sands of the Kalahari.

It’s fashionable with the Sarah Palin set to attack Harvard and treat its graduates as elitists. But if you spend any time on campus, you see students drawn from all over the world – an astonishing number these days with roots in Asia – whose chief assets are brainpower and hard work.

Ever since the economic crisis in 2008, millions of people have accepted cuts in all sorts of things – from real wages and living standards to benefits and hospital care – without any real opposition. The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid – but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.

Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would’ve been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then.

Ah, there’s a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who’s, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he’s a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.

I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre… but they don’t. They expect to sit back and not participate.

I love people who aren’t embarrassed. I’m always embarrassed, so it’s always astonishing to me when people aren’t like that.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

It goes back to the starfish. That’s when the light bulb really popped over my head. We’d found one on the beach, and I was struck by what astonishing creatures they are, talking with Dad about how they regenerate.

I’d seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

The most astonishing subset of the Deep Web is a collection of dark alleys called the Dark Web. The Dark Web is generally thought of as a collection of criminal elements intent on subverting the law, stealing our money, and possibly kidnapping our daughters.

The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that’s attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.

For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.

It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

‘White Teeth’ has far too many characters, and its plot is tortured. But Smith has an astonishing intellect. She writes sharp dialogue for every age and race – and she’s funny as hell.

Well, I think people don’t recognise my face because I’m so much older now, but it is astonishing that people can recognise a voice. I do sometimes get recognised, and indeed a lot of people do come and see me.

My love of books – not just of their tactile pleasures but of their astonishing variety – was born in a book-filled house; my father is a scholar.

The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.

I must admit I found it astonishing to watch the candidates below Donald Trump beat up each other and never lay a glove on the front-runner. I mean, when I was running, everybody went after the front-runner and pointed out my weaknesses and foibles, and that’s part of the normal primary process.

Katwe is fifteen minutes from my home. It’s entirely about knowing it from the inside. For instance, the incredible vibrancy of style. Kampala is the center of used clothing in the world. Everyone dresses in secondhand clothes, but they look astonishing for it.

It’s kind of astonishing that people trust strangers because of words they write on computer screens.

It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.

Don’t you think it astonishing that, at 58, I am still working at improving my career?

‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ is a wonderful machine. It’s one of the great farces, and it’s astonishing to remember that this is written by the same man who wrote ‘Hamlet,’ ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ or ‘Cymbeline.’ It’s so similar, and yet the form is so different.

What is astonishing is that globalised technology, like Whatsapp and Viber, really gives a lot of leeway to negotiating spaces and to keeping one’s identity. So people are able to be more receptive as a gay community to be part of an environment that is going to challenge the law.

Software tends not to kill people, and so we accept incredibly fast innovation loops because the consequences are tolerable and the results are astonishing.

If our grazing land was allowed to revert to natural ecosystems, and the land currently used to grow feed for livestock was used for grains, beans, fruit, nuts and vegetables for humans, this switch would allow the UK to absorb an astonishing quantity of carbon.

What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.

What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right… For better or worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our visions of the past than the commercial cinema.

The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.

Great architects like Taut, Mendelsohn, and Gropius built some astonishing buildings which were to change the way architects around the world thought. Brecht and Weill forever changed musical theatre; Kaethe Kollwitz and others changed German perceptions of the purposes of art.

An astonishing disengagement from reality is necessary to actually believe there is something sinister about protecting people’s homes from invasion through squatting.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

As somebody who’s been writing about this subject for getting on twenty years now, it’s astonishing how the climate has changed in the last five years.

I find Suez astonishing for the first hour. It is a ditch in a desert, but a stunning one. The sensation of being hemmed in by huge ships, moving at a stately pace through a man-made waterway, is extraordinary.

When I heard about the Microsoft Kinect, though, I felt an urgency rising in me. A game you played without touching any machinery? A chance to wave your hands around, Minority-Report style, and move things around on a screen? This sounded like almost too much fun, with gadget-y pizzazz that sounded astonishing.

It’s astonishing what you learn and feel and see along the way. That’s why a reporter’s job, as you know, is such a joy.

I think if anything, what ‘The Astonishing’ proved is that we’re always going to experiment.

Every day, at home, I have the astonishing and humbling opportunity – together with my wife Sophie – to nurture empathy, compassion, self-love, and a keen sense of justice in our three kids.

I was fortunate enough to visit a lot of beautiful places around the world. The most astonishing and memorable experiences were my trips to Africa and Australia.

The astonishing thing for me is that I had a career before politics and I never thought about my colour.

Humans pull together in an odd way when they’re in the wilderness. It’s astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download.

The Barbara Hepworth museum in St. Ives is fascinating. Her achievements were astonishing.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me – Cecil Taylor is an amazing character… Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

My favourite thorn belongs to the rose with a name like a mouthful of broken teeth, Rosa sericea pteracantha. It is grown almost entirely for its astonishing ruby-red shark’s fin thorns that are at their lapidary best in early summer, especially when backlit by a low setting sun.

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.

I get to go to work and come home with something interesting or enriching or astonishing.

I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.

I can only appreciate the kind of work that goes into being a top drag queen. Ru Paul looks just astonishing as a woman. And he’s got this fantastic turn of phrase. I find him hilarious.

The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.

I find it so astonishing how poorly a lot of politicians handle negative whatever in the press. You have to just get it all out there. You have to be totally, uncomfortably honest.

It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess.

I mean, I’m an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does – it is astonishing.

The head of Fermilab was reading Astonishing Stories when he was ten.

The sacrifices our warfighters make for us is simply astonishing in modern American society.

I think that the first men to land on Pluto are going to make some very astonishing discoveries. But I am also sure that they will never go there in rockets. They will have to make the immense trip by some more powerful means – like the anti-gravitational drive.

For many people, Mrs. Brown has come from the middle of nowhere. But Mrs. Brown was first written for radio. I wrote it for a radio series in 1992. It was a five-minute piece for radio, and it’s been absolutely astonishing.

The geysering on Enceladus is the most astonishing phenomenon we have in our solar system.

The fact that someone came forward and offered $1.25 million to make a movie was astonishing. We were also allowed to keep many of the original stage cast.

To continue down the path of comprehensiveness, Wikipedia will need to sustain the astonishing mass fervor of its birth years. Will that be possible? No one knows.

What matters here are the works – finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.

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

Jeffrey Zeldman had an astonishing ability to craft a seductive coolness using educated references, dry humor, and retro/organic imagery.

All that we don’t know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That’s a whole, thrilling new form that I really enjoy. They are Tolstoy-an in their endless character development and narrative changes… a show like ‘Breaking Bad’ is astonishing.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

Christianity is under attack globally, and particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where Christian populations are ceasing to exist at astonishing rates due to widespread persecution by Islamists.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It’s astonishing. It pours out of him.

When you look at my astonishing physique you probably think to yourself, This kid must eat nothing but molten steel. That’s a common misconception.

I remember as a student going to Covent Garden, where they took out the stall seats and you hunkered down on the floor – I heard Pavarotti in Tosca there, and the experience of being in that same room with that astonishing voice has never left me.

And, as I have said, it’s made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren’t external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five.

Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago’s mean streets.

When we contemplate the heroes of Christianity, and compare our feeble efforts with their astonishing performance and self devotion, we should fall into despair, were there not a few softening features, by which they are brought back to the ranks of humanity.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‘what happens’ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read ‘A la recherche’ in one go, and I’m a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

If I scribbled a few words on a cocktail napkin and showed it to my family, they’d proclaim it astonishing and more culturally relevant than the Bible.

We oppose a system that generates huge wealth through astonishing innovation but is fatally unable to distribute fairly and provide universal access to its spoils.

‘Between Shades of Gray’ is a story of astonishing force. I feel grateful for a writer like Ruta Sepetys who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression. Beautiful and unforgettable.

When Oscar Niemeyer died on December 5, 2012, ten days before his 105th birthday, he was universally regarded as the very last of the twentieth century’s major architectural masters, an astonishing survivor whose most famous accomplishment, Brasilia, was the climactic episode of utopian High Modern urbanism.

English girls’ schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

It’s just astonishing to me that the media is so interested in how much it costs to secure our border and has no interest in the cost of refusing to secure our border.

I do admire actors who manage to lose huge amounts of weight for roles: you have to have astonishing discipline to do that to your body and maintain it for a certain length of time before letting yourself go back to normal.

I’d love to make films in England, and I tried to. I think there’s a wealth of amazing talent and astonishing writing over here; there just seems to be more of a culture of developing films than actually making them.

The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford is an astonishing building, designed by Christopher Wren. Its painted ceiling has just been restored so that the darkish miasma that was Robert Streeter’s original allegory of truth and light striking the university is now bright with playful cherubs and lustrous clouds.

Smiths songs certainly have an astonishing afterlife.