“That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.”

Source: As quoted in Col. E. N. Sanctuary’s Are These Things So?, p. 278.

Source: The History of Love

Quote from The Power of Mystery (7 December 1957), a London Observer interview with John Richardson, as quoted in Braque: The Late Works (1997), by John Golding, Introduction, p. 10
unsourced variant translation: I made a great discovery. I don't believe in anything anymore. Objects do not exist for me, except that there is a harmonious relationship among them, and also between them and myself. When one reaches this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual void. This was everything becomes possible, everything becomes legitimate, and life is a perpetual revelation. This is true song.
1946 - 1963

The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
Context: I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.

Memorandum, 'The Peace Settlement in Europe' (November 1916), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 325
First Lord of the Admiralty

Variant: How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life.
Source: Meditations

Source: The Lovely Bones

To a Giraffe
Poetry