A Quote by Seamus Heaney
The problem as you get older... is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to surprise yourself. There's no way of arranging the surprise, so it is tricky.
Related Quotes
I've never had a surprise birthday party. I've had every other type of surprise. I've had surprise beatings, surprise drug tests, surprise daughter I think.
Humor is based on surprise, and surprise is a milder way of saying shock. It's surprise that makes the joke.
I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time. And then you can really surprise yourself. There's that cliche, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader!"
I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.
Do something that surprises yourself cause if you don't surprise yourself, you're not going to surprise anybody else.
You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.
I am an actor. Let me act, let me audition. Let me show what I can do. You need to surprise yourself every time and that will surprise the audience or casting person.
Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.
Prayer adds an element of surprise to your life that is more fun than a surprise party or surprise gift or surprise romance. In fact, prayer turns life into a party, into a gift, into a romance.
The problem with success is that you lose the capacity to fail and the capacity to surprise people. So, if I'm able to surprise myself every day, I can surprise you as well. If I enjoy someone's work and they offer me their project, I do it. So what's the point of the supposed creativity? If Mona Lisa could be made by anyone, then it wouldn't have been the most beautiful painting in the world. The knowledge that you can fail can make you come first.
Humor's always been the problem of my work, hasn't it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing.
There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder.
I really like it when you can step outside of what's come before and find a surprise for the reader and find a surprise for yourself.
One of the things I love so much about horror is the way it uses surprise, and when I write, it's about: What have we not seen before? What's going to surprise us? If we're not going beyond, taking that challenge, I get kind of bored.
I suppose it's nice to have some surprise in life and to surprise yourself in life and see what else you can do.
I can't imagine, I can't get in the mind of a wrestling fan who wants to break news that spoils a surprise for somebody. Would you want a surprise spoiled?
Related Authors
Alexander Pope Quotes
English
Poet
Emily Dickinson Quotes
American
Poet
George Herbert Quotes
British
Poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
American
Poet
Homer Quotes
Greek
Poet
Horace Quotes
Roman
Poet
John Milton Quotes
English
Poet
Khalil Gibran Quotes
Lebanese
Poet
Lord Byron Quotes
British
Poet
Maya Angelou Quotes
American
Poet
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Irish
Poet
Ovid Quotes
Roman
Poet
T. S. Eliot Quotes
American
Poet
Walt Whitman Quotes
American
Poet
William Butler Yeats Quotes
Irish
Poet