It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.
Ever since the economic crisis in 2008, millions of people have accepted cuts in all sorts of things - from real wages and living standards to benefits and hospital care - without any real opposition. The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid - but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.
I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening.
The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb.
I do admire actors who manage to lose huge amounts of weight for roles: you have to have astonishing discipline to do that to your body and maintain it for a certain length of time before letting yourself go back to normal.
As somebody who's been writing about this subject for getting on twenty years now, it's astonishing how the climate has changed in the last five years.
The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.
Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
The geysering on Enceladus is the most astonishing phenomenon we have in our solar system.
I love people who aren't embarrassed. I'm always embarrassed, so it's always astonishing to me when people aren't like that.
