"Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often."
— Mae West

"Nathan: (voiceover) Every once in a while people step up, they rise above themselves. Sometimes they surprise you, and sometimes they fall short. Life is funny sometimes, it can push pretty hard, but if you look close enough you find hope in the words of children, in the bars of a song and in the eyes of someone you love. And if you're lucky, and if you're the luckiest person on this entire planet, the person you love decides to love you back."
— One Tree Hill

"Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises."
— Erma Bombeck

"That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams)

"I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed."
— Bernard Beckett (Genesis)

"I said I *liked* being half-educated; you were so much more *surprised* at
everything when you were ignorant."
— Gerald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals)

"The secret to humor is surprise."
— Aristotle

"Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us."
— Pope Benedict XVI (Love in Truth: Caritas in Veritate)

"'I never considered. I never considered--' he began. 'I mean, I never thought that once I was a master, it meant I could own bonders. I don't think I want that. I don't think I want that at all.' 'Well, what did you think being a master meant?' asked Errikkin, incredulously. 'I thought it meant, well, being free. And doing what you wanted when you wanted. Like sleeping late. Or like training your own dragon...' (135)."
— Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood)

"if you always prepare for the worse, every surprise is a pleasant one."
— Robert Jorden

"A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon everyone as they saw the pianist enter"
— Kate Chopin (The Awakening)

"Frankly, I couldn't be more astonished that this guy was involved in something like this than if you came riding through my apartment on a hippopotamus."
— Dan Rather