If some longing goes unmet, don't be astonished. We call that Life.
Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.
Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.
Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.
You'll be a good parent when you're ready to no longer be selfish. Until I was about 35, it was all about me. I look back and I'm astonished at how I lived my life - it was totally self-involved.
Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make.
I just am who I am. And then when people label me eccentric or different, I'm kind of astonished because I think, 'This is completely normal. This is just how I am, it's how I've always been.'
Job was astonished at seeing Almighty God so intent on doing good to us that He seems to have nothing more at heart than to love us and to induce us to love Him in return.
We were astonished by the beauty and refinement of the art displayed by the objects surpassing all we could have imagined - the impression was overwhelming.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.