Top 100 Startling Quotes
#1. We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night ...
Andrea Gibson
#2. Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.
John Updike
#3. Derek Bok asks the right question, 'What policies would produce the greatest happiness?' and he gives great and often startling answers, combining his deep knowledge of politics with the new findings of happiness research.
Richard Layard, Baron Layard
#4. My head reeled at the sheer and startling beauty, the wide, bare openness of it. The sense of space, the vastness of the sky above and on either side made my heart race, I would have travelled a thousand miles to see this. I had never imagined such a place.
Susan Hill
#5. Even in the grimmest of circumstances, a shift in perspective can create startling change.
Susan Griffin
#6. I always want to see films that are startling and amazing. Not just shocking. Shocking is easy to do. But startling in the way that makes you change how you think about things. Those are the movies I like the best.
John Waters
#7. Go for a short walk in a soft rain - lovely - so many wild flowers startling me through the woods and a lawn sprinkled with dandelions, like a night with stars. And through it all the sound of soft rain like the sound of innumerable earthworms stirring in the ground.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#8. As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I will be participating in several hearings on the startling revelations contained in the report.
Charles Bass
#9. I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it what you will - awakening, development, American Renaissance - it is a most startling and promising condition of affairs.
Elsie De Wolfe
#10. I love your eyes, did you know that? I have never seen eyes as green as yours. They put the leaves of the Amazon Forest to shame. And your unbelievably long and dark lashes make them even more startling.
Cristiane Serruya
#11. Mort(e) is wonderful and weird, never saccharine and always startling.
Cat Rambo
#12. The startling truth is this: as this narrative unfolded, amidst all the voices breaking free, telling their stories for the first time, the loudest voice of all was that of Norman Rockwell.
Jane Allen Petrick
#13. I try to photograph things that are near to me because I work best among things I know. I'm not concerned with startling anyone or discovering new forms; formal qualities are only tools to help state my message.
Roy DeCarava
#14. It was a startling task to undertake, for the Book of Mormon had never been illustrated before, at least on any professional level. There were no precedents.
Arnold Friberg
#15. People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.
Barbara Mertz
#16. Tell me something wonderful- a story that's startling and marvelous.
Julie Eshbaugh
#17. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies. Next,
Robert Louis Stevenson
#18. ...the past shooting out at me like sparrows for the hedgerow, startling and inescapable.
Paula Hawkins
#19. During the investigation evidence of the vulnerability of women in the modelling profession was startling and models are at high risk of eating disorders.
Denise Kingsmill, Baroness Kingsmill
#20. It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power.
Raymond Carver
#21. Their banter was rich and comfortable, their teasing intimate and profound; their 'I love you' without the use of those startling words.
Sarah Winman
#22. Several national tests have revealed the following startling statistics about why salespeople fail ... 15% Improper training both product and sales skills. 20% Poor verbal and written communication skills. 15% Poor or problematic boss or management. 50% Attitude.
Jeffrey Gitomer
#23. To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight. Michael's book 'Moonwalk', provides a startling glimpse of the artist at work and the artist in reflection.
Jackie Kennedy
#24. In the same way that the best lies have an element of truth, maybe evil is made all the more powerful when it is accompanied by the startling presence of grace.
Rae Carson
#25. Our consciousness, a startling outgrowth of the universe, is possibly its most important part, the fraction of existence that can think, feel, marvel at itself.
Alan Moore
#26. I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely ... gone.
Meghan O'Rourke
#27. You know it's always amazed me - I think the most startling thing that's happened in the last couple of decades is that there is no sort of objective reporting anymore.
Brian De Palma
#28. Kelly Link's prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can't live without short stories.
Tea Obreht
#29. The startling reality of things is my discovery every single day.
Fernando Pessoa
#30. Patients with various other types of movement disorders may also be able to pick up the rhythmic movement or kinetic melody of an animal, so, for example, equestrian therapy may have startling effectiveness for people with parkinsonism, Tourette's syndrome, chorea, or dystonia.
Oliver Sacks
#31. Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual. When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers.
Alexander McQueen
#32. Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.
Naomi Shihab Nye
#33. Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#34. Yes, well, you're supposed to. Men never do as they're told. Case in point, this moment, where you have the startling rudeness to refuse being consumed.
Brandon Sanderson
#35. I think one of things is that all fantasy it seems to me works the way your brain basically works. This is perhaps a startling concept, but I think it's true.
Diana Wynne Jones
#36. The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ... at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.
Louis Menand
#37. You just said you were sorry."
...
"I was only apologizing," he said stiffly, "for startling you. The applause was to compliment you on the improvement in your life-saving techniques since the last time you-
Meg Cabot
#38. When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result.
Marshall McLuhan
#39. Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?
startling, unexpected, unknown?
Virginia Woolf
#40. Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.
Leonard Cohen
#41. We'd better get. But y'all have a nice night,' I say. Apparently, fear turns me Texan. A startling personality insight that I'll jot down later if I'm not dead in a ditch.
A.M. Robinson
#42. She wasn't used to kisses that were simultaneously startling and wonderful, casual and memorable. Her world was so much smaller than that.
Sarah Cross
#43. I'm not usually sold on epiphanies. I am more interested in the opposite experience: not those rare moments of startling insight or realization, but-what I suspect are more common-those sudden flashes of anxious confusion and bewilderment.
Robert Atwan
#44. there can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving r=the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy
Michael McCarthy
#45. Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.
Joseph Stiglitz
#46. My next startling discovery: flaming breath is hot.
Rick Riordan
#47. We love old travelers: we love to hear them prate, drivel and lie; we love them for their asinine vanity, their ability to bore, their luxuriant fertility of imagination, their startling, brilliant, overwhelming mendacity.
Mark Twain
#48. If you keep at it long enough, one day you may witness some greater disturbance, some rushing breach of the water's surface so startling and violent and exhilarating that you too will suddenly, and always thereafter, believe in monsters.
Paul Schullery
#49. It was startling and humbling to realise how much time you could spend with people to whom you meant so little and vice versa
Mhairi McFarlane
#50. It keeps startling me that at the beginning of this 21st century, at a time when we can ... explore the depths of the seas and build an international space station, we have not been able to make childbirth safe for all women around the world ... This is one of the greatest social causes of our time.
Thoraya Obaid
#51. I always feel a fool when in the company of people who work for a living. It brings out my startling lack of common sense.
Stephen Fry
#52. It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed.
Alan Cumming
#53. God knew where he was, but he asked so as to start a conversation with Adam and avoid startling him too much to reply.
Rashi
#54. Jesus!" Luke exclaimed.
"Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling.
Cassandra Clare
#55. It is a startling and solemnizing fact that even as late as the twentieth century, the Great Command of Jesus Christ to carry the Gospel to all mankind is still so largely unfulfilled.
John Mott
#56. In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein set out to showcase, in sometimes startling ways, the continuing relevance of a classic philosopher. But what's remarkable is that she actually brings off this tour de force with both madcap brilliance and commanding authority.
Michael Dirda
#57. Dept. of Speculation is gorgeous, funny, a profound and profoundly moving work of art. Jenny Offill is a master of form and feeling, and she gets life on the page in new, startling ways.
Sam Lipsyte
#58. Jasper!" Casey shouts, startling the young woman. "My cargo is talking to me!
Nathan Reese Maher
#59. The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.
Marquis De Custine
#60. If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society.
Ruth Simmons
#61. Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.
Will Self
#62. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.
Rick Riordan
#63. These healers ... my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories ... But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
#64. Developing compassion for Congress and politicians is a good way to begin practicing the new social activism if you want to make effective changes in the world. Perhaps the most startling new insight of all is that there is no other way to effectively change the world.
Gary Zukav
#65. His eyes were so blue as to be startling; I decided I'd never seen blue eyes before, until that moment. They were the color of morning, the color of the ocean; the color of the sky.
Melanie Benjamin
#66. A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
Robert Henri
#67. From its first startling image, Orhans Inheritance will seep under your skin and leave an indelible mark upon your heart. What lucky readers we are to inherit Aline Ohanesians gorgeous work.
Gayle Brandeis
#68. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
Eric Hoffer
#69. In TheColorful Apocalypse, Greg Bottoms explores the frontier between inspiration and psychosis with the expressive power, the passionate fervor, and the faithfully unflinching honesty for which his work is deservedly known. This book is incisive, startling, and often genuinely moving.
Madison Smartt Bell
#71. When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes.
Janet Flanner
#72. Barry recounts all this in prose of often startling beauty. Just as he describes people stopping in the street to look at Roseanne, so I often found myself stopping to look at the sentences he gave her, wanting to pause and copy them down.
Margot Livesey
#73. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#74. Startling as this may sound, the truth is that many children read for a remarkably small percentage of the school day.
Michael J. Schmoker
#75. One of the most startling discoveries of my life was the realization that the Jesus that I love, the Jesus who died for me on Calvary, that Jesus, is waiting, mystically and wonderfully, in every person I meet. I find Jesus everywhere.
Tony Campolo
#76. First. I began my career as a copy girl. and the White House coverage, for example, was in the then-Women's section. So it was social coverage. It wasn't news, although we often got rather startling news out of it.
Judith Martin
#77. Alexander McQueen's designs are all about bringing contrasts together to create startling and beautiful clothes and I hope that by marrying traditional fabrics and lacework, with a modern structure and design we have created a beautiful dress for Catherine on her wedding day.
Sarah Burton
#78. And as we meet needs on earth, we are proclaiming a gospel that transforms lives for eternity. The point is not simply to meet a temporary need or change a startling statistic; the point is to exalt the glory of Christ as we express the gospel of Christ through the radical generosity of our lives.
David Platt
#79. The United States, to state the obvious, is greatly concerned by the startling number of unaccompanied minors that - children and teenagers who are making a very perilous journey through Central America to reach the United States.
Joe Biden
#80. It was always very important for us that we presented ourselves as a band, because it's a three-part writing process and it's a three-part decision making process, it's not two producer guys and a girl that sings the songs. It's startling how many people make that assumption.
Lauren Mayberry
#81. We kept each other's stare a long time, for we had each done a startling thing, dodged time for an instant - which is the only definition of happiness I know.
Andrew Sean Greer
#82. Nothing moves fast in Texas except the windmills
And the hawk that rises up with a clatter of wings.
(Nothing more startling there than sudden motion,
Everything is so still.)
May Sarton
#83. He opened the door wider. "He's waiting." He gave me what was probably meant to be a significant wink, but a corner of his mouth moved more than his eye did and the result was a fairly startling face.
Dashiell Hammett
#84. Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.
Carl Hiaasen
#85. He bent his head and brushed my lips with his. His hair spilled against my forehead, sleek and startling. Shock held me immobile, shock - and something else. Part of me wanted to lean into him.
Ann Aguirre
#86. When there is no one to remind you what society's rules are, and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be prepared for some startling changes.
Robyn Davidson
#87. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver.
Rachel Joyce
#88. As we reach midlife in the middle thirties or early forties, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.
Gail Sheehy
#89. Whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England.
G.K. Chesterton
#90. [On meditation] ... that's the single most important thing that I do ... there's something about understanding who you truly are. The essence of everyone is so beautiful that it's startling.
Jennifer Beals
#91. Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it at all.
Jane Smiley
#92. If Holland recovers consciousness, tell him we'll get him to a healer just as soon as we can," I told them. "You may not want to let him see his arm lying there, though. That's an awfully startling thing to see when you just come to your senses."
- Ysolde
Katie MacAlister
#93. Many a gentleman had likened his first meeting with her to downing a very strong cognac when one was expecting to imbibe fruit juice - that is to say, startling and apt to leave one with a distinct burning sensation. No,
Gail Carriger
#94. Any Canadian looking in the bathroom mirror is sure to recognize one of Guy Vanderhaeghe's people. Man Descending is the startling debut of an excellent writer.
Rudy Wiebe
#95. She pulled away to gaze into his eyes with a startling vulnerability, desperately seeking a harbor in the storm. In his eyes lay wisdom far beyond his years, shades of ocean waters traced within lakes of finely ground cobalt."
"I am a Cowboy
Ken Alexopoulos
#96. A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.
Edwin Land
#97. His head jerked up. He had one of the most startling and unwelcome thoughts of the last century.
Am I a boyfriend?
He growled and jerked the door open.
Thea Harrison
#98. Neither he [Ferenczi] nor Freud believed that a person should be exempted from legal punishment
or worse, that he should be punished by compulsory psychiatric "treatments"
because of psychoanalytic information about him. In the light of current thought, this is a startling and sobering fact.
Thomas Szasz
#99. I feel sometimes and in some ways like Linda Romanoli and Monica Velour; I feel marginalized because I'm in my fifties. If you went online and you look at some of the blogs, which one can do on a lonely night, it's pretty startling what people will say about you just because you're in your fifties.
Kim Cattrall
#100. Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
William Safire
