Beneath The Surface Quotes

As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren’t so different.

There are no secrets in life; just hidden truths that lie beneath the surface.

The past lies beneath the surface, intransigent truth. Remembered or not, what we say and do remains, always.

As with all my work, whether it’s a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I’m trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.

My father was a psycho-analyst and I think that fact was very influential on my development as an artist. Trying to search beneath the surface of things for an unexpected sense of mystery.

The water is calm, but the currents pull beneath the surface. Though they can’t be seen, they have the power to drag cats to their deaths.

There are two sorts of curiosity – the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

It’s not unusual to find big political shifts that take place beneath the surface before they’re visible above the surface.

Is it not clear that a reviewer’s psyche, like an iceberg, is seven-eighths beneath the surface?

Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole. Indeed, something greater than a phenomenon confined to art can be discerned shimmering here beneath the surface – shimmering not with light but with an ominous crimson glow.

I catch a flash of red-gold beneath the surface of the water, and realize that there are koi in the pond, massive, serene, and I wonder: are they dreams of fish, or fish who dream?

As you become more rooted inside — as you drink from this silent stream of life that runs beneath the surface of everything — as you live from that depth of your own being more and more, then you’ll be able to rise taller and stronger in this world; more than you may have ever thought possible.

It’s like, imagine the ripples on top of an ocean. And I’m in a rowboat, reactively dealing with the waves and water coming into my boat. What I need to do is dive into the deeper solace, the calmness beneath the surface.

How close beneath the surface, even in the happiest family, is the chronic grievance! I sometimes think that tinderboxes are inert and powder kegs mere talcum compared to the explosive possibilities in the most commoplace domestic situation.

Death is always there, just beneath the surface.

Everyone can feel the nothingness, the void, just beneath the surface of everyday routines and securities.