Unsettling Quotes & Sayings

The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea. — William O. Douglas

That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that. — Eric Weiner

You were a very confusing object for the Itineris to digest. So it held you for a bit. You're quite fortunate it eventually decided to spit you out."
The words "digest" and "spit" were more than a little unsettling. "Okay," I finally said. "That's um, really awful to know. But thanks for telling me."
He shrugged. "It was nothing. — Rachel Hawkins

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives. — Marlon Brando

I don't like auditions. I feel like they're a very unnatural setting and it's a very unsettling experience. Because you can't help but walk in and feel like you're trying to prove yourself to people. And you should just walk in and be. — Sharni Vinson

It's strange that in an age when we pride ourselves on our independence of thought we meekly submit without further question to the declaration of a clearly unbalanced nineteenth century philosopher that God is dead! That's cheeky, of course - and one rarely comes away from reading Nietzsche without learning something new and significant. He's certainly FAR more unsettling for faith than any contemporary atheist I know of. — George Pattison

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case."
— Sydney J. Harris

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them. — Amity Shlaes

The photograph dragged Maneck's eyes back to it, to the event that was once unsettling, pitiful, and maddening in its crystalline stillness. The three sisters looked disappointed, he thought, as though they had expected something more than death, and discovered that was all there was. He found himself admiring their courage. What strength it must have taken, he thought , to unwind those sarees from their bodies, to tie the knots around their necks. Or perhaps it had been easy, once the act acquired the beauty of logic and the weight of sensibleness. — Rohinton Mistry

The road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important for all to understand - though all change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others. — Robert Kennedy

I just slipped into my mother's office to look at the names of my new peer helpers, and I'm so happy! Your name is on the list! I thought maybe I'd scared you by coming right out and asking you to apply. I realize it's an unusual setup, but try not to think of it as my parents offering to pay people to be my friend. I know there's something unsettling and prideless in that. I prefer to think of it this way: my parents are paying people to pretend to be my friend. This will be much closer to the truth, I suspect, and I have no problem with this. I'm guessing that a lot of people in high school are only pretending to be friends, right? It'll be a start, I figure. — Cammie McGovern

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck. — Roger Zelazny

The worst crime of all would be that a mistake happens and no one talks about it or learns from it. So, as unsettling as it is to think about, these mistakes, complications and unexpected outcomes get discussed openly, and everyone hopefully gains something from it. — Sanjay Gupta

The last ten years it has been the two of us and your flavor of the month. This guy, BE, he's not a flavor of the month. BE is the spice of life. You know it, and I know it. I know how unsettling this is for you. Just know that he won't let you down. He's not going to stand you up. You can focus on doing what needs to be done and soon, you will be together again. — Emma Nichols

Phoenix wouldn't stop looking at me like he was looking through a telescope. It was unsettling, being stared at like I was the most beautiful thing in space. — Briana Pacheco

Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were executed because of the unsettling, threatening power of their souls, which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words. — Thomas Moore

Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she'd begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even - people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets - was made up of a combination of these elements. "Isn't it amazing to think of, Ruthie?" he'd asked. Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling - even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that. — Jennifer McMahon

He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering
all at once. — Gail Carson Levine

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

In one way or another, almost every twentysomething client I have wonders, 'Will things work out for me?' The uncertainty behind that question is what makes twentysomething life so difficult, but it is also what makes twentysomething action so possible and so necessary. It's unsettling to not know the future and, in a way, even more daunting to consider that what we are doing with our twentysomething lives might be determining it. — Meg Jay

There was an air of vague and unsettling paranoia, an undercurrent of rumors, snatched fragments of conversation anticipating future revolution. — Patti Smith

AS GREGOR SAMSA AWOKE from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. — Anonymous

There's hardly anybody who hasn't owned or at least ridden a bicycle at some point in his or her life. I mean, sure, you do come across people occasionally who never learned how to ride a bike, but it's rare and a little unsettling. It's like meeting Someone who can't operate a washing machine, or a thirty-two-year-old guy who never learned how to pee standing up. You smile politely, you pity them silently, and then you move on down to the other end of the bar. Despite — BikeSnobNYC

Decide.

Take one of the most unsettling things you feel exist in your life and decide.

Decide to meet it with love and understanding.
Decide to meet it with a proactive spirit that believes that a solution, an ease, a peaceful resolve rests in the meeting.

Prepare your heart for what it feels like to be joyous over the result. Give life to this solution with your breath.

Let any fear be a helpmate, let it actually support and lift you to an awareness that your next opportunity for growth is revisiting you through this present unsettling because you are now more than capable and authentically ready to meet it.

Learn and value the lesson and transcend its repetitive nature. — David Ault

When you say fair, Samantha," said Mr Green through a peculiar smile, "do you mean one of those travelling fleets of vehicles that arrive and set up things like spinning Waltzers and Big Wheels and all manner of machines that whizz people around in circles and up and down and from side to side? Machines that could..." Mr Green turned away and his unnatural smile became even more unsettling... "easily go wrong! — Mark Gorton

Nico drew his sword. His smile was even more unsettling than his scowl.
"Underground," he said. "My favorite place."
Underground was not Jason's favorite place. — Rick Riordan

She rose and walked to the small fireplace, where a kettle had been set long before supper. It was gently steaming now. She caught up a rag and reached for the handle, but another, much bigger, hand got there first. Lily gave a tiny jump, watching wide-eyed as Caliban picked up the hot kettle as easily as lifting a twig. At least he'd had enough sense to shield his palm from the heat with a rag. He stood blank-faced until she pulled herself together. "In here." She stepped gingerly around his bulk and led him into the little bedroom. A tin hip bath was waiting, laid beside the bed on some old cloths. It was already half full of cold water. "You can pour it in there." He lifted the hem of his shirt to hold the bottom of the kettle and she caught an unsettling flash of his stomach. Hastily she looked away, her cheeks heating. — Elizabeth Hoyt

It was always the most striking scene, the best work, the most disturbing emotion and unsettling idea that attracts criticism. — Rafael Yglesias

Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing ... Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all. — Mark Kingwell

Like a cross between Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions and Janice Lee's Damnation, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing is at once smart and slyly unsettling. It is expert at creating a quietly building sense of dread while claiming to do something as straightforward as describe lost films - like those conversations you have in which you realize only too late that what you actually talking about and what you think you are talking about are not the same thing at all. With Rombes, Two Dollar Radio deftly demonstrates why it is rapidly becoming the go-to press for innovative fiction. — Brian Evenson

There's no such thing as equal justice anywhere. It's unsettling to a society when you try to achieve such a false balance. — Frank Herbert

[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
(pg. 44, "The Unsettling of America") — Wendell Berry

The feminist challenge was sweeping: it embraced education and
occupation, together with legal, political, and social status. It even
dared broach the subject of equality in personal, and especially
matrimonial, relationships. Such assertiveness was more unsettling
than the racial threat because it was more intimate and immediate:
few white men lived with blacks, but most lived with women. — Cynthia Russett

Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman's weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [ ... ] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over. — Isaac Marion

Twenty unsettling minutes later she dropped the
pen on her stack of papers, and then leaned back in her chair. The time seemed to be dragging like a immobile car without tires hooked to a tow-truck with square wheels traveling cautiously down a road of fresh gravel. Tess struggled to maintain focus, similar to how an alternator belt would struggle if it had to try to keep traction on a turn spindle that had been lubricated after an antifreeze leak. And similar to the - would be - alternator on the sidelines of that metaphor, Tess's enthusiasm for her after hours work was having difficulty in keeping charged up also. — Calvin W. Allison

Immunity is a public space. And it can be occupied by those who choose not to carry immunity. For some of the mothers I know, a refusal to vaccinate falls under a broader resistance to capitalism. But refusing immunity as a form of civil disobedience bears an unsettling resemblance to the very structure the Occupy movement seems to disrupt
a privileged 1 percent are sheltered from risk while they draw resources from the other 99 percent. — Eula Biss

This new calm was becoming unsettling. Victor struggled to assess it. — V.E Schwab

One of the most unsettling things about 'Monologue' is its long silences, in which the man sits alone, staring into the middle distance, without grip of his narrative, lost to the past. — Samantha Harvey

In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?' — Tom Stoppard

There is always something vaguely unsettling about being alone in an empty building that is not your own. It is as if, whenever present inhabitants are away, the phantoms of former owners come shimmering out of the woodwork to protect their territory. Although you cannot see these ghosts, you can certainly feel their unwelcoming presence, and sometimes even smell them: a sort of shivering in the air that tells you that you're not alone and not wanted. — Alan Bradley

When you stand in your own authority, based in your own direct experience, you meet that ultimate mystery that you are. Even though it may be at first unsettling to look into your own no-thingness, you do it anyway. Why? Because you no longer want to suffer. Because you're willing to be disturbed. You're willing to be amazed. You're willing to be surprised. You're willing to realize that maybe everything you've ever thought about yourself really isn't true. — Adyashanti

You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me. — Edward Norton

The really odd, unsettling thing was that Batman was smiling. Not — Glen Weldon

It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough. — Sarah Dessen

You get weird and unsettling behaviour in the country. — Sara Paretsky

In a world where women do not say no, the man is never forced to settle down and make serious choices. His sex drive
the most powerful compulsion in his life
is never used to make him part of civilization as the supporter of a family. If a woman does not force him to make a long-term commitment
to marry
in general, he doesn't. It is maternity that requires commitment. His sex drive only demands conquest, driving him from body to body in an unsettling hunt for variety and excitement in which much of the thrill is in the chase itself.
The man still needs to be tamed. His problem is that many young women think they have better things to do than socialize single men. — George Gilder

It is unsettling to find how little it takes to defeat success in medicine. You come as a professional equipped with expertise and technology. You do not imagine that a mere matter of etiquette could foil you. But the social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific
matters of how casual you should be, how formal, how reticent, how forthright. Also: how apologetic, how self-confident, how money-minded. In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating. How each interaction is negotiated can determine whether a doctor is trusted, whether a patient is heard, whether the right diagnosis is made, the right treatment given. But in this realm there are no perfect formulas. — Atul Gawande

Red is wild. She is unsettling. She intrigues. Wear red and other women will assume that you are a predatory vixen who is out to steal their husbands and suck the blood of their children. — Simon Doonan

Do we get a bedtime story?" Otto asked cheekily. "Oh yes, of course. I think we'll have one of my favorites; it's called 'The Little Boy and the Tranquilizer Gun." Raven smiled in a rather unsettling way. — Mark Walden

May walked slowly around the body, studying it. Putrefaction had been halted in its advance, but the corpse's skin had turned green and black, producing an acrid odour. He found it hard to imagine that this man had recently been walking around, eating in restaurants, watching TV. He was someone's lover, someone's son, but there was almost nothing human left. Without a head his trunk bore an unsettling similarity to something you would find in a meat locker. How would his loved ones feel if they could see him like this? 'Get anything else?' 'It's tricky because the usual decay process has been interrupted by the relatively sterile storage of the body. Usually, after two to three days you get staining on the abdomen. The discolouration spreads, veins grow dark, the skin blisters after a week, tissue starts softening and nails fall off at around the three-week stage, and finally the face becomes unrecognisable as the skin liquefies - — Christopher Fowler

No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory. — Patricia Hampl

But the Seeker, who is of unsure gait, also has unsure traits. The way that he moves is unstable and ungainly. It is also unnatural. No other life form adopted this precarious locomotion method of walking on two legs. Intrinsically off balance at all times, it takes just a small stone or a banana peel to topple him over. It is a mysterious wobbly motion much like that of a bicycle. How easy it is, to throw a cyclist off balance, need not be elaborated. But try throwing a truck off balance? Unsettling the Seeker's balance is also equally easy. But try throwing a horse or a tiger off balance? Even a child knows that four wheels or, at least, three wheels are more stable than two wheels. — Biju Vasudevan

Certainly, for a newspaper director, to have within arm's reach a Travaglio, about whom every starring actor, supporting cast and extra of Italian political life he is ready upon cold request to provide an inquiry brief refined in the most minute details is a nice comfort. But also a bit unsettling. The day I asked him if in that archive, into which no one is allowed to stick their nose, there were a brief with my name on it, Marco changed the subject. — Indro Montanelli

In seconds an 'up' elevator came rushing toward them. The doors opened, revealing a mostly-empty interior.
"Sometimes," he said, "you have to go up to go down."
Liv followed him in, marveling at the scene below them. She could see the full scope of Dragon Con from her bird's eye vantage, the floor a living mass of bodies. Tiny toy-sized people in cosplay moved in bright splotches of color ten stories down. And it wasn't just one section. The atrium level was equally packed, the hallways leading to ballrooms around the hotel teaming with people. With an unsettling rush, the elevator sprang upward, the figures shrinking into specks. Liv's stomach contracted and she pulled back from the glass. They were incredibly high. — Danika Stone

When I went to the starting line of the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, it was with the unsettling conviction that some of my competitors were cheaters. — Don Kardong

There are settling girls, and there are unsettling girls. The ones who seem to have it in them to be flyers are the ones who want to snuggle into settling. The ones who look as settled as old housedogs want to twist their way into flying. Necessarily, you must be defensive about being a settling sort of girl. — Amruta Patil

-- I'm wary of all morning people. There is something unsettling about a person who likes to leave the comforts of a warm bed and soft pillow. Absolutely masochistic. — K.T. Mara

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling. — Walter Goodman

No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals. — Lois Lowry

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable. — Matt Berninger

Free trade has been proven, time and again, as a reliable path to economic development. It pushes the public and private sectors alike toward greater accountability and transparency. It lifts people out of poverty, and while it can force unsettling changes on a society, those changes prove to be worthwhile in a very short time. — Jonah Goldberg

When the contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have an unsettling effect on the conscious mind of everyone. When this psychic dynamic is not consciously metabolized, not just within an individual but collectively, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis. — Paul Levy

I had met plain women, even ugly women, whose physical shortcomings had been remedied by the spirit within, their decency and kindness even effecting a kind of transformation upon them, softening the bluntness of their features. This was not such a woman. The blight was inside her, and no restyling of her hair, no careful use of cosmetics, no pretty dresses could have made her any less unsettling than she was. — John Connolly

Beneath Albright's office, the colliery sprawled across the hillside, red brick buildings scattered as though hurled from a great height, a hotchpotch of mismatched structures spattered on the valley floor. At the bottom stood the winding house, wheels motionless, above it, the engineering sheds and workshops, canteen and bath house. All lay empty. No buzz and hum of machinery. No voices raised in laughter or dispute. Gwyn found it unsettling: his lads had been out a month and a half and already the power had drained from the place. In the stillness, he caught the echo of footsteps. The crunch of boots on gravel. Generations of long-gone Pritchards clocking in and out. He was bound to Blackthorn by the coal that clogged his veins and by a bond of duty. The strike left him as diminished as his pit, day dragging after idle day. — Kit Habianic

For reasons neither I nor anyone else could gather, every time I got to the part in Mark's story about the woman being beaten up, Tommy would laugh warmly before delivering his line. It was unsettling. It was disturbing. Take after take, Tommy/Johnny would react to the story of this imaginary woman's hospitalization with fond and accepting laughter. — Greg Sestero

The truly unsettling thing about being a woman was needing a man to realise one's full potential — Margaret Way

The man's hands had a terrible unsettling power over her. He didn't brush or lightly graze her skin. He stroked her, caressed her, as if he wished to give her pleasure rather than take his own. — Christy Carlyle

I heard Joby Talbot's Hovercraft piece for orchestra and felt its immediate physical impact - visceral, unsettling, hungry and direct. These short five minutes became our keystone to unlocking a strangely seductive score that tensions the aggressive force of the White Stripes with the enigmatic beauty of Talbot's own compositions. — Wayne McGregor

The most efficient way to transcend unsettling thoughts is through the life breath. When we bring our full attention to the life breath, it becomes a gateway to access a deeper and higher level of awareness. — Christopher Dines

In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early '60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war. — Tom Brokaw

It's hard for me to care about anyone enough to put myself in the unsettling position of growth. In — Nina G. Jones

You're too nice when you're wounded. It's unsettling. — Sarah J. Maas

Humble people were unsettling at best. All that lack of backbone. It was just creepy. Like talking to linguine. — Laura Florand

Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. — Barton Gellman

Drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own. The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be. You know why I show that to you? — Neil Gaiman

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. — Alan Watts

There is something deeply unsettling about a child crying insincerely. — Emma Forrest

PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words. — Samuel Johnson

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop - and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high. — Charles Stross

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world. — Richard Misrach

Because after a couple days of this fabulous invisible room-cleaning, I start to wonder how exactly Petra knows when I'm in 1009 and when I'm not. It's now that it occurs to me how rarely I ever see her. For a while I try experiments like all of a sudden darting out into the 10-Port hallway to see if I can see Petra hunched somewhere keeping track of who is decabining, and I scour the whole hallway-and-ceiling area for evidence of some kind of camera or monitor tracking movements outside the cabin doors - zilch on both fronts. But then I realize that the mystery's even more complex and unsettling than I'd first thought, because my cabin gets cleaned always and only during intervals where I'm gone more than half an hour. When I go out, how can Petra or her supervisors possibly know how long I'm going to be gone? — David Foster Wallace

Customer needs have an unsettling way of not staying satisfied for very long. — Karl Albrecht

then there was the Brownie camera in his bedroom. The developed film revealed a blurry shot he never recalled taking. In the dark image protruded boards - part of a wall, maybe a rafter. Paul wondered if a tornado could take a picture of itself. Now that was an unsettling thought. — Richard Bedard

It's usually best not to ask philosophers anything, precisely because they have the habit of what in the Persian language is called sanud: the profitless consideration of unsettling yet inconsequential things. — Nick Harkaway

Basal Ganglia casts an unsettling spell, but one that in its aphoristic intensity and lightning-flash insights into human loneliness and connection, achieves a genuine empathic wisdom. — Sergio De La Pava

I couldn't possibly repeat the words he used .They were so unsettling that I sent Nancy indoors to find my spectacles. — John Bude

Afterward, Sara didn't really remember falling asleep, still wearing her robe although she meant to get dressed and had had Serafina lay out a pair of jeans and a blouse for her. In any case, she had slept. And there had been dreams
of the unsettling kind she didn't want to recall. — Rosemary Rogers

I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment. — Joyce Carol Oates

I can't watch the news. It's extremely unsettling. Certain people can be a little desensitized because of movies, and I'm totally a part of that world, so I understand. But when you're actually seeing what's happening, you can't help but be a little affected. — Selena Gomez

Chevy Stevens is in top form. ALWAYS WATCHING is a tense and twisty exploration of dark memories, hidden pasts, and a place that seems like heaven but might be hell. This is a deep and exciting novel, as unsettling as it is gripping. — Lisa Unger

It was hypnotic, and then it was unsettling, and finally I became aware of another entity in my universe, sitting on the shore two hundred yards away, smoking a pipe ... — Laurie R. King

There was something liberating and terrifying about the first day on a new job. In any new assignment, Bobbie had always had the unsettling feeling that she was in over her head, that she wouldn't know how to do any of the things they would ask her to do, that she would dress wrong or say the wrong thing, or that everyone would hate her. But no matter how strong that feeling was, it was overshadowed by the sense that with a new job came the chance to totally recreate herself in whatever image she chose, that - at least for a little while - her options were infinite. — James S.A. Corey

All nightmares are a peephole through which we see the unsettling particles of our trampled past, whereas all uplifting dreams are a portal to escape the inexplicable undercurrents that worry our survival. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Mom was silent for a moment. I'm sorry, Melissa, but can you blame me for worrying? In less than an hour I found out you're being stalked by a killer, sleeping with a stranger, and hiding with him in an empty apartment. You have to admit that sounds ... unsettling. — Robin DeJarnett

Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. And I know that is unsettling.
But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: Adventure. — Mark Batterson

God's movement is often abrupt and unsettling rather than predictable and settling. — Michael Joseph Brown

Ah yes, the facts. I've spent my whole life running after them, convinced that if I found demonstrable, incontrovertible facts I would also find some kind of truth. Now aged sixty-three, faced with this war which has only just begun and with an unsettling premonition of what is soon to follow, I'm beginning to think the facts are just a front and that the truth they mask is at best like a Russian doll: as soon as you open it up you find a smaller one inside, then another which is even smaller, then another and another, till finally all you are left with is something the size of a grain.
Letters against the war: Letter from Quetta, 2011. — Tiziano Terzani

There is no loneliness more lonely than to be alone in a crowd. No awkwardness more unsettling than the inside joke you do not comprehend. — Claire North

Silence is the worst. Whenever a thick cloud of silence descends, the yapping voices inside me become all the more audible, rising to the surface one by one. I like to believe I know all the women in this inner harm of mine but perhaps there are those I have never met. Together they make a choir that does not know how to tone down. I call them the Choir of Discordant Voices. It is a bizarre choir, now that I think about it. Not only are they all off-key, none of them can read notes. In fact, there is no music at all in what they do. They all talk at the same time, each in a voice louder than the other, never listening to what is being said. They make me afraid of my own diversity, the fragmentation inside of me. That is why I do not like the quiet. I even find it unpleasant, unsettling. — Elif Shafak

He smiled at her, and Sophie's emotions went to war. She had always admired Banallt's intellect and his easy manner with her. He never had condescended to her or made her feel unworthy or insignificant. But how could she forget him arriving at Rider Hall with Tommy, drunk and with a woman who was not respectable? All the times he'd watched her with his unsettling eyes and
then left with Tommy. The night he'd admitted he was unfaithful to his marriage and saw no reason to change. — Carolyn Jewel