Bafflement Quotes & Sayings

Those people who leap from personal bafflement at a natural phenomenon straight to a hasty invocation of the supernatural are no better than the fools who see a conjuror bending a spoon and leap to the conclusion that it is 'paranormal'. — Richard Dawkins

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public. — Paul Gauguin

Take some very deep breaths," Miranda said. "Relax. Concentrate. Then envision a frosty six-pack and wiggle your pinky."
A frosty six-pack. Kylie inhaled. He held out her pinky, and right then Della chimed in. "We are talking a six=pack of soda, not a cold guy with good-looking abs, right?"
There was a strange kind of sizzle in the air. And suddenly appearing in front of the refrigerator was a shirtless, shivering guy with great abs. His blue eyes studied the three of them in complete bafflement.
"What the ... !" he muttered.
Kylie gasped.
Miranda giggled.
Della snorted with laughter. — C.C. Hunter

During a press conference he declared (to general bafflement) that he was profoundly influenced by distributism. He had actually said so before, several times, on the campaign trail, but since journalists have a natural tendency to ignore what they don't understand, no one had paid attention and he'd let it drop. Now — Michel Houellebecq

As long as she persisted in her belief that bafflement justified her actions, she felt confident no one would contradict her. — Thomm Quackenbush

My parents were told by the principal of West Barnstable Elementary School and my teacher that I was a bright boy whose spelling was in the retarded range and whose handwriting was the worst they'd ever seen. I find it embarrassing that I spell so badly. I will do almost anything to avoid being embarrassed, but no effort either on my part or on the part of any teacher has ever dented my utter bafflement when it comes to choosing which letters to put down, how many, and in what order. — Mark Vonnegut

A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars — Terryl L. Givens

Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected; they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat. — Carol P. Christ

When things are baffling they usually don't unbaffle themselves.There's just, you know, a certain amount of baffling stuff that always, like, really baffles you, and I've found that it's best to accept bafflement whenever it comes along, and then move on. — Dean Koontz

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely.
"What?" Alex asked.
"This cannot be."
"What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time.
"I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together."
"And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and they can go home.
"AND ... you are the first person that has nothing for me to see."
"And here I was hoping you'd say I'd win the lottery or get married to a supermodel or something." Alex said, starting to laugh.
"You don't understand. I don't see anything, anything at all. There is nothing to you, nothing but what I see before me."
"So ... what does that mean?"
"It means you don't exist. — J.C. Joranco

Some of them are mech," said Zita, nimbly picking her high heels through the steaming pools of red goo and severed, wriggling limbs. She was splattered with blood and grinning as she came to them, but she frowned to see the utter bafflement on Rose's face. "Hey, snap out of it. Haven't you seen mech before?" She kicked a man's severed head, and Rose gasped when his face slid off, revealing a skull of gleaming silver metal.

Rose shook her head. "Mech are illegal. The government s-said they feared a robot war!" she insisted, turning to follow as Zita limped past her.

Zita laughed dryly, folding up her rifle and tucking it under her skirt. "Is it so hard to imagine your government lied? Governments tend to do that. — Ash Gray

Thus, although life is by and large unthrilling, when we do find ourselves in the sort of situation upon which thrillers dote we cannot really experience it, because our imaginations are occupied by the familiar tropes of popular fiction. And the result of this is a kind of dull bafflement, and the sense that whatever it is cannot really be happening. We actually think that phrase: this can't be happening to me. — Michael Gruber

Like a phoenix rising from ashes, she had created a new life for herself out of the wreckage of the old one, and it suited her down to the ground. She was a duchess with no duke, a mistress with no master, and much to the bafflement of society, she liked it that way. Her life was comfortable, safe, and as predictable as a finely tuned machine, every aspect within her control. — Laura Lee Guhrke

I can do this," [Daemon] crooned, slowly circling around her. "I can keep Dorothea and Hekatah off-balance enough to keep the others safe and also prevent those Ladies from giving the orders to send the Terreillean armies into Kaeleer. I can buy you seventy-two hours, Jaenelle. But it's going to cost me because I'm going to do things I may never be forgiven for, so I want something in return." He could taste her slight bafflement before she said, "All right."
"I don't want to wear the Consort's ring anymore." A slash of pain, quickly stifled.
"All right."
"I want a wedding ring in its place." A flash of joy, immediately followed by sorrow. She smiled at him at the same time her eyes filled with tears. "It would be wonderful." She meant that. — Anne Bishop

I suppose ... " she said reflectively, "I could make more of an effort to overcome my shyness."
"Do as you please. But when you're with Rohan or any other man, you had better keep in mind that you belong completely to me."
Trying to interpret the comment, Evie stared at him with astonishment. "Are you ... is it possible ... you're jealous?"
Sudden bafflement flickered across his features. "Yes," he said gruffly. "It would seem so." And throwing Evie a glance of bewildered annoyance, he left the room. — Lisa Kleypas

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless ... speciesless. — John Fowles

Jenny's admonition had the desired effect. Ned drew a deep breath and thrust his arm gingerly into the bag, his mouth puckered in distaste. The expression on his face flickered from queasy horror to confusion. From there, it
flew headlong into outright bafflement. Shaking his head, he pulled his fist from the bag and turned his hand palm up.
For a long moment, the two men stared at the offending lump. It was brightly colored. It was round. It was
"An orange?" Lord Blakely rubbed his forehead. "Not quite what I expected." He scribbled another notation.
"We live in enlightened times," Jenny murmured. — Courtney Milan

I try to be open-minded. And yet this food writer has less sense than God gave a goose about where food comes from. I'd worked on our relationship, moving through the stages of bafflement, denial, and asking this guy out loud, Where do you live, the moon? — Barbara Kingsolver

As a youth I got my jollies by confronting my professors with facts that ran completely contrary to what they were trying to ram into our thick skulls. His expressions of bafflement and anger had never failed to amuse me. — Lia Habel

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It is the illusion of magic and the magic of illusion that we are primarily interested in- not the privy tricks or the key to the secrets themselves. We seek the bafflement, the contradictions, the amusements, and the innumerable emotions that ripple uneasily through the audience. It is not knowledge we are after, but mystery and disguises. We want to gaze at the impossible. We are hungry for surprises, astonishment. In short, we are looking for a true story, but one impossible to explain in all its complexity. When we discover that story, we shall have found- magic. — Edward Claflin

Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident. — Joyce Carol Oates

I'd trust you a hell of a lot more if you didn't refer to her as an old friend when we both know she was a hell of a lot more"
"What she was is nearly a dozen years in the past. Years before I ever set eyes on you." Now simple bafflement joined the irritation and the ice. "Christ Jesus, are you jealous of a woman I haven't spoken to, seen, or thought of in years?"
Even only looked at him for one long moment. "You're thinking of her now — J.D. Robb

Perhaps the funniest example is that of the Rev. Milton Barfoot, who said to Dan's brother, in apparently honest bafflement, "But, isn't Dan afraid of hell?" No, Reverend, Dan doesn't believe in hell anymore, that's one of the things about being an atheist, you see. — Dan Barker

Kathleen doesn't look like you," Henry said suddenly, staring at me.
"Uh, no. She doesn't. Not really," I stammered, not knowing what else to say. Without another word, Henry turned and left the kitchen. I heard him run up the stairs and looked at Georgia who met my gaze with bafflement.
"Did you hear that, woman?" I asked Georgia. "Henry doesn't think Kathleen looks like me. You got something to tell me?"
Kathleen shrieked again. Georgia wasn't moving fast enough with the jar of bananas she'd produced.
Georgia smirked and stuck out her tongue at me, and Kathleen bellowed. Georgia hastily dipped the tiny spoon into the yellow goo and proceeded to feed our little beast, who wailed as she inhaled.
"She may not look like you, Moses. But she definitely has your sunny disposition," Georgia sassed, but she leaned into me when I dropped a kiss on her lips. It didn't hurt my feelings at all that my dimpled baby girl looked more like her mother. — Amy Harmon

Remember that what seems zeitgeisty today is the cause of tomorrow's bafflement or, worse, ridicule. — Neel Mukherjee

Which is probably one of the reasons those of us who love contemporary fiction love it as we do. We're alone with it. It arrives without references, without credentials we can trust. Givers of prizes (not to mention critics) do the best they can, but they may - they probably will - be scoffed at by their children's children. We, the living readers, whether or not we're members of juries, decide, all on our own, if we suspect ourselves to be in the presence of greatness. We're compelled to let future generations make the more final decisions, which will, in all likelihood, seem to them so clear as to produce a sense of bafflement over what was valued by their ancestors; what was garlanded and paraded, what carried to the temple on the shoulders of the wise. — Michael Cunningham

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. — Eugene Paul Wigner

I've got nothing." Eve swiveled around to him. "Zip. You've got something. What?"
"Apparently, it's not coffee," he said with a glance at his empty mug.
"What am I, a domestic droid?"
"If so, why aren't you wearing your frilly white apron and little white cap, and nothing else?"
She sent him a pained look of sincere bafflement. "Why do men think that kind of getup is sexy?"
"Hmm, let me think. Mostly naked women wearing only symbols of servitude. No, I can't understand it myself."
"Perverts, your entire species. What have you got?"
"Besides a very clear picture of you in my head wearing a frilly white apron and little white cap?"
"Jesus, I'll get the damn coffee if you'll cut it out. — J.D. Robb

They both looked at me in a way that was fast becoming familiar: two parts bafflement to one part awe at my talent for making a bad situation worse. — David Bennun