You took me by surprise.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

Bryn Mawr Drive is only two or three miles from the Spartan, and it took me less than five minutes to get there.

It took me a moment to realize what was odd about that panel: there was a gimbaled compass welded to it, which rocked gently back and forth as the Land Rover bounced about.

There was something about his face that disturbed me and it took several seconds to realize what.

Pat took Eileen and me out to dinner at a swell steak house and told us with tears in his eyes how happy he was we had come together again.

I guess fooling Hans and me took doing.

I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.

`` It took me five hours to write it that way ''.

When someone says, for example, `` They took x-rays to see that there was nothing wrong with me '', it pays to consider how this statement would normally be made.

I took another sidelong glance at the other registration card, then took the key to Unit 13 that she had given me and went down long enough to park the car.

My man, he won't be around a little while, he just fixed me up with this stuff they took out of the Elite.

`` You took a picture of me at the corner of Washington and Blake about three thirty this afternoon ''.

These qualities alone, however, would not account for their success, and it took me a while to discover the crowning virtue that completes this company's collective personality.

`` I guess that redhead next to me took your advice.

I know a guy named Jack Hamrick, a very bright young engineer who was with Chrysler, and I took him with me to Allstates.

In the middle of the stairway, all of a sudden we heard His … voice: ' Do not bring him in here ', and so they took me back ".

After Bennett's death his son took over the company, and the posters were replaced with pictures of the son ( who looked imposing and stern in contrast to his father's kindly demeanour ) with the text " Let me be your big brother.

And then my son Terry took me walking in Beverly Hills and explained that it wasn't nearly the end of it.

" James Berardinelli also gave the film three stars out of four, saying that " the intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise " and that the film " stands above any other filmed Grisham adaptation ".

Noticeably frail and sluggish, Groucho took a bow for his deceased brothers, saying, " I wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share with me this great honor.

The words " It took all the strength I had not to fall apart " were changed to " Only the Lord could give me strength not to fall apart ".

Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies ; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist's wife that " It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born ".

In any case, he had no intention of being caught asleep, so he carried his revolver in its holster on his hip and he took his Winchester with him and leaned it against the fence.

I remember being told it would happen so fast people would think it took place overnight.

After they had finished eating, Melissa took Sprite the kitten under her arm -- `` so that Auntie Grace can teach it about the whistle '' -- and climbed into the station wagon beside her mother.

Even so, it took her several days to force Walter to tell her Nicolas's whereabouts.

Prohibition was the law of the land, but it was unpopular ( how many of us oldsters took up drinking in prohibition days, drinking was so gay, so fashionable, especially in the sophisticated Northeast!!

Of the longer pieces of the volume none is so memorable as `` Nameless And Immortal '', which at once took rank among the finest poems ever written in the Swedish language.

When we `` forced '' individuals to assume the corporate structure by means of taxes and other legal statutes, we adopted what I would term `` pseudo-capitalism '' and so took a major step toward socialism.

On this issue, then, as on so many in these months, Steele and Swift took rigidly opposed points of view.

Finally, colleges and clubs took the line that speakers from England were not wanted any longer, even speakers like S.K., so unlike the novelists and poets who had patronized the Americans for many years.

The Outdoor Education Project took cognizance of the fact, so often overlooked, that athletic activities stressed in most school programs have little or no relationship to the physical and mental needs and interests of later life.

Half the manhours you pay for on most jobs are wasted because the job was not planned right, so the right tools were not handy at the right place at the right time, or the right materials were not delivered to the handiest spots or materials were not stacked in the right order for erection, or you bought cheap materials that took too long to fit, or your workmen had to come back twice to finish a job they could have done on one trip.

One of the many things that was so nice about her was that she always took your questions seriously, particularly your very, very serious questions.

She would sometimes even get a little hard on you, she took you so seriously.

Pakistan was created in 1947 expressly as a Muslim state, but when the army took over eleven years later it did so on a wave of mass impatience which was directed in part against the inability of political and religious leaders to think their way through to the meaning of Islam for the modern political situation.

Time stood still for these people, and their load of pleasure was so commingled with the shocks and pains of the dromozoa that the words of the Lady Da took on very remote meaning.

Polo's travels took him across such a diverse human landscape and his accounts of the peoples he met as he journeyed were so detailed that they earned for Polo the name " the father of modern anthropology.

The warning — a result of violent activity springing from Mexico's drug cartel debacle — took college campuses by storm, with some schools going so far as to warn their students about the risks of travel to Mexico over spring break.

Normally, the bishop of Hereford would have led the defence in the absence of an Earl of Hereford, but in 1049 the incumbent, Æthelstan, was blind, so Ealdred took on the role of defender.

Colangelo's group was so certain that they would be awarded a franchise that they held a name-the-team contest for it ; they took out a full-page ad in the sports section of the February 13, 1995 edition of the state's leading newspaper, the Arizona Republic.

Cuyp took from van Goyen the straw yellow and light brown tones that are so apparent in his Dunes ( 1629 ) and the broken brush technique also very noticeable in that same work.

It took all these faults to lose so celebrated a battle.

Bonnet's crew of about 70 were reportedly dissatisfied with his command, so with Bonnet's permission, Teach took control of his ship Revenge.