Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 7.
George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author
The Leveling Wind: politics, the culture, and other news, 1990-1994 (c. 1994), Will, Viking; as cited in Quotable Quotes (1997), Editors of Reader’s Digest, Penguin : ISBN 1606525956
1990s
“I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.”
Julia Glass (1956) Novelist, journalist, editor
Source: I See You Everywhere
“I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.”
Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster
As quoted in "You Ask The Questions" in The Independent http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020912/ai_n12647620 (12 September 2002)
“Expect nothing and you'll always be surprised”
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist
Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician
Ann Wilson on not being surprised by Chris Cornell's death, YouTube, November 15, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqcg8Tla1nU,
“Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.”
Jodi Picoult (1966) Author
Source: Vanishing Acts
“That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.”
V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry
"Two Worlds," Nobel lecture (7 December 2001) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html <br class="br">Context: I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will — with luck — come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing.
“I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.”
Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey
Variant: No, thank you, I don't mind the rain,' I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.
Source: Agnes Grey
