Unsettling Quotations

I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

I find the whole time travel question very unsettling if you take it to its logical extension. I think it might eventually be possible, but then what happens?

President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It's an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.

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.

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.

There is something very unsettling about being with someone when they die. People say it's peaceful. It's not peaceful. It's the most personal thing you can do, is die, and you feel almost like you're invading someone's most personal moment by being there.

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.

Right now, it's all really just a big show. It's unsettling to the workers, but you can expect both sides to go full steam ahead right up to the cliff and for this thing to then get settled.

I found talking to the young failed suicide bomber the most unsettling and depressing - that there could be that much hatred and ignorance.

Capping the upside is the fact that inventories have not drawn much despite the cold weather we have had thus far and therefore are not unsettling the markets much.

Because she looks so real and natural, there is something unsettling about her. She's our direct ancestor, so you expect to see something human, but she is not a human and not an ape, but something in between.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

It is a little unsettling to be the first wave. It's going to be a rough deal. Nobody wants to go on a strike on Christmas.

The 2001 and 2003 tax measures are an unsettling reminder that unified party control is no guarantee of either coherence or fiscal responsibility.

We don't know the extent of damage to our homes. That's the most unsettling part.

X-Files' also came out during a time when government conspiracies were running rampant and people wanted to be entertained and forget how unsettling things had become,

unsettling that we have to be reminded of the plight of the poor in America in this manner.

Either way, the lyrics are very effective in creating sort of this strange gothic atmosphere, where there's this sort of unsettling feeling or feeling of grim portent or whatever you want to call it.

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.

The word on the Street is that it's Russia. That is the drum everyone is beating, and in conjunction with the problems in Asia it's really unsettling a lot of people.

It would be unfair and terribly unsettling for them to be half a world away -- away from their families at this critical juncture.

There is something very strange and unsettling for me about making a work that doesn't fit with what's the norm or what's acceptable. There's something both liberating about it and challenging. I can imagine it doing more harm than good.

Dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that don't.

Alan Greenspan's history is being a gradualist. Having done five quarter-point increases in less than a year, another quarter-point would fulfill one of his objectives of not unsettling the markets. That's why I believe there will be a quarter-point hike in May, possibly followed by another in June.

Right now, this is unsettling noise that in the short run is not going to be favorably received but in the long run is neutral until either a conviction or acquittal occurs,

Oil still remains the big uncertainty out there for the market, ... I think the attack in Saudi Arabia and worries about Friday's OPEC meeting are unsettling financial markets.

Oil still remains the big uncertainty out there for the market. I think the attack in Saudi Arabia and worries about Friday's OPEC meeting are unsettling financial markets.

It's unsettling to hear he's going to play a little offense.

It obviously was disappointing and a little unsettling that the one person so emphatic about not taking steroids was one of the first since then to be disciplined.

It's been unsettling to discover that every form of narrative, even one that purports to tell the truth, is a kind of lying.

It went about as smoothly and efficiently as could have been reasonably expected -- and better than most people expected. Nevertheless, it's been destabilizing and unsettling enough to make it almost certain that what's going to happen next is a pause to reflect and reconsider.

I know Eric had an unsettling season last year. We hope we can work something out so he can be here. Restructuring is possible.

It's just unsettling to have our DNA in a highly unsecured environment like the public mails. Once a person's genetic blueprint is available, a map of physical traits is fairly easy to extrapolate.

What's even more unsettling is the way these people hide what they're doing from the public. They strip the labels off miracle wheat when they ship it, for instance, and say, 'Watch out. Don't plant too much and don't depend on it too much.'