Underneath The Surface Quotes

#1. People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.

Johnny Depp

#2. When you assess your own life, consider it with the eye of a gardener. Underneath the surface lies rich, fertile soil waiting to nurture the seeds you sow. Even more than you can imagine will grow there if given a chance.

Steve Goodier

#3. And no matter how tough he acts, the stress of whatever situation he's in is in there somewhere. Buried deep or right underneath the surface.

Penelope Douglas

#4. I discovered the fun of genre is ... you get to explore your fears, and you get to use the metaphor of the genre - whether it's a giant monster or a ... 12-year-old vampire. Whatever it is, you can sink something underneath the surface and make a personal film under the guise of great fun romp.

Matt Reeves

#5. I process that. I realize that the more I talk to people, the more I see everyone has something going on underneath the surface.

Janet Gurtler

#6. Because I actually find the next take after they've controlled it a little bit and repressed the laughter is actually a really interesting take, because that's still going on underneath the surface. That struggle to maintain composure becomes part of the joy of the scene.

Jay Roach

#7. If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.

Karl Rove

#8. But that's the thing with the what -if game- you really never know the answer to the question. And maybe it's better that way. Because underneath the surface what-ifs are much worse ones.

Elizabeth Eulberg

#9. Several shades of the color, cloudy, silvery shades, churn underneath the surface of his skin, making him look marbled, textured. It paints a barely believable portrait. Every feature on him works in harmony to create, well, a person. But he's unlike any person I've ever seen.

Chelsea Scott

#10. I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.

Alexander Ahndoril

#11. Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

Dan Chaon

#12. You get to be analytical about the process and now I can watch the movie and see all the different connection things and see all the things that are underneath the surface.

Quentin Tarantino

#13. Even if we don't see it, God is always working underneath the surface, behind the scenes and orchestrating His plans and purposes.

Louie Giglio

#14. I've played a lot of characters who are creeps or weirdos, with a deep darkness underneath the surface.

Zach Woods

#15. On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Milan Kundera

#16. People's lives are often other than they seem to be on the surface. And sometimes, what's underneath and hidden is the best part of all, the part of real value.

Stan Barstow

#17. Used to put movies down by saying that they were 'deep on the surface'
meaning that there was nothing underneath.

David Denby

#18. It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.

Italo Calvino

#19. 'All we can see is the surface. But there's so much more we can't see beneath. I bet it's as big as the world down there, underneath the water. There could be anything down there. Things we can't even imagine. How can we understand anything if we can see so little of it?'

Augusta Li

#20. The surface of American life looks smooth, prosperous, peaceful. But underneath, fault-line shifts in family and work life have led us into what some have called 'advanced insecurity.'

Arlie Russell Hochschild

#21. Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

Jamaica Kincaid

#22. Just for a moment, she could hear the muffled tick tick from inside its mouth before it disappeared underneath the murky surface, and curled away.

Jodi Lynn Anderson

#23. The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.

J. Courtney Sullivan

#24. Revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath this singular sight was looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly

J.K. Rowling

#25. Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean.

Eckhart Tolle

#26. On the surface, there was always an impeccably realistic world, but underneath, behind the backdrop's cracked canvas, lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract.

Milan Kundera

#27. Knowing mathematics is like wearing a pair of X-ray specs that reveal hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world.

Jordan Ellenberg

#28. Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Michael Caine

#29. The more we try to ground our identities in external possessions or triumphs, the more we plaster our names on everything we can accumulate, the more we cling to surface and style, the less we find underneath.

John F. Kavanaugh

#30. Studying goes deeper than mere reading. There are surface nuggets to be gathered but the best of the gold is underneath, and it takes time and labor to secure it.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#31. I think this is the case in the great majority of authoritarian states: on the surface, because of repression, everything seems frozen, but when the sun comes out and the ice melts, you find that there was a lot of life underneath all along.

Aung San

#32. The thing about the ocean is that the surface won't always tell you what is going on underneath.

Jennifer Arnett

#33. But Mike was like a Bjork song-all happy and giddy and fun on the surface, but bubbling with turmoil and pain underneath.

Sara Shepard

#34. No matter how bad things get, it's impossible not to love someone who made you toast. Once you've been through that crusty surface to the soft underneath and tasted the warm, salty butter you'll last forever.

Nigel Slater

#35. As a general thing, I've always been drawn to characters who appear to be one thing on the surface, but are actually something else underneath.

Michael Sheen

#36. A child's behavior we see on the surface is the reflection of the feelings that are rooted underneath. We can use topical treatments to try to shape what the behavior looks like, but if we really want things to change, we need to address the roots. Nourish the roots, see the growth.

Kelly Bartlett

#37. On the surface, 'Book of Mormon' is extremely irreverent, but underneath, there's a great sweetness and a very positive message.

Stephen Schwartz

#38. As a surfer, I think of places like a wave: you see one thing on the surface. But you always know there's something different going on underneath.

Don Winslow

#39. I consider fantasy the heir of mythology, addressing a real human need to seek out answers to life's many mysteries. It is a genre that can tell an entertaining and enthralling story on the surface, and yet deliver a potent message underneath, where everything becomes a symbol of something greater.

Dean F. Wilson

#40. As an actor, what's interesting is what's hidden away beneath the surface. You want to be like a duck on a pond - very calm on the surface but paddling away like crazy underneath.

Alexander Skarsgard

#41. For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.

Robin Wasserman

#42. By turning herself into a fucking machine, she has created a kind of temporary grid. But underneath, in the place of dream and feeling, she is going places that she, on the surface, would not understand.

Mary Gaitskill

#43. Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

Ali Smith

#44. Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

Joss Whedon

#45. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what's underneath.

Aldous Huxley

#46. Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.

Neil Gaiman

#47. Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what's underneath.

Beth Moore

#48. Meditation is not to be on the surface of a thing or underneath it or above it, but it is to be in everywhere and to be in nowhere!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#49. Always behave like a duck- keep calm and unruffled on the surface, but paddle like the devil underneath.

Jacob M. Braude

#50. Be like a duck . . . keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath. - Unknown

Jolene Brackey

#51. The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.

Robertson Davies

#52. By raising tall trees for windbreaks, citrus underneath, and a green manure cover down on the surface, I have found a way to take it easy and let the orchard manage itself!

Masanobu Fukuoka

#53. I tend toward an expansive sentence that has a cold surface and, visible underneath it, a magma of unbearable heat. I want readers to know from the first lines what they will have to deal with.

Elena Ferrante

#54. The biggest energy losses for most people are relationships, interrelations with other people. That is where we lose the most energy, through our attachments - opening up to people who might be very nice on the surface but underneath they have a lot of problems.

Frederick Lenz

#55. It's easy to recognize the surface of beauty. To see it with your two eyes. But the challenge to the artist is conveying the many layers underneath.

Alyson Richman

#56. It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.

James McBride

#57. This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.

Rebecca Lee

#58. Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.

Thomas Carlyle

#59. We carry secrets under our skin like shrapnel. Our surface wounds heal, but the damage festers underneath while we worry what tiny pieces will work their way to the surface for the world to see.

Stephanie Lawton

#60. Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

Morris Gleitzman

#61. Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television.

Joko Beck

#62. After something like that . . . well, even though you try to get through it - and might seem fine on the surface - underneath you're a wreck, and you don't even know it. And sometimes, it takes a while to figure out that you're still struggling with everything that happened.

Nicholas Sparks

#63. Some men are one thing on the surface and another underneath. The true poet shows not just the exterior of his subject, but all the contradictions within, and lets the reader draw his own conclusions.

Steven Saylor

#64. Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.

Michael Caine