It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.

Rickman’s line expresses a preference for openness over certainty: the idea that life is more livable—and more hopeful—when the future remains genuinely undetermined. The “wonderful” quality is not ignorance but possibility: if tomorrow is not fixed, then change, discovery, and reinvention remain available. The phrase “sort of surprising” suggests a gentle embrace of unpredictability rather than dramatic upheaval, valuing the small, unforeseen turns that keep experience fresh. Read this way, the quote resists fatalism and over-planning, proposing that imagination and curiosity thrive when we allow the future to retain its mystery.