The first time I set out to find George F. Kennan, in 1982, I had just turned 21, begun my final semester at Princeton University and noticed with astonishment that the senior thesis deadline had crept to within four months.
The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.
In recent years there's been a lot of philosophical theorising about how important magic is, and how it takes us back to a childlike state of astonishment. I think all this is just nonsense. Magic isn't meaningful or important other than how you're performing it in that moment.
I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can't be all that bad.
Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.
When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.
My sculptures cause an uproar, astonishment, and put a smile on your face.
I requested the gentlemen to put on their hats, and the ladies their shawls, to avoid catching cold, and then had the windows widely opened. This proceeding caused some astonishment and alarm at first; for the Americans generally have a dread of cold air.
To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.
Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.
