Fred Frith Quotes

When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.

It is an endless procession of surprises. The expected rarely occurs and never in the expected manner.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

Who likes surprises? Nobody I know likes surprises. But facts change on the ground.

… experience should teach us that it is always the unexpected that does occur!

We expect surprises. There has to be surprises.

Life doesn't always give us what we are expecting.

Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.

In the course of the reform, some new circumstances that we had not anticipated have appeared.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

Predictability is the cousin of death: I don't necessarily want people to see me coming. You know?

No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.

I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

In world history man’s actions result in something quite different from what he purposes or intends.

No man can tell what the future may bring forth

History, as it comes into our daily lives, is charged with surprise and shock.

The older I get, the more I'm surprised with life. Things don't end up the way you think they will.

The big things are the things that you don't expect.

The things that you can't really foresee and that kind of surprise you, and a lot of times they are bad, but other times, they bring something different and new to the table.

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.

I don't want to set the world up for surprises.

You just can't control your art in the future.

I think there are narratives going on all the time that we think of as tangential - up until they turn out to be deciding factors in our lives.

Most things in life come as a surprise.