Quotes About Duality

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.

Good and bad - this is the story of my life.

My life, at least, is divided between writing and performing and mixtures of the two.

Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours.

This is the best worst time of my life.

When truth's a feeling, can it be both? Both true and untrue?

WHEN IT WAS DECIDED (When was that again, and by whom?) that we were all supposed to choose between fiction and nonfiction, what was not taken into account was that for some of us truth can never be an absolute, that there can (at best) be only less true and more true and sometimes those two collapse inside each other like aTurducken.

Opposing ideas can be simultaneously true; one reinforces the other even as they're both canceled out.

Newtonian versus quantum, predictability versus flexibility, optimization versus adaptation, efficiency versus innovation—all these dichotomies reflect a fundamentally different way of making sense about the world and how to manage effectively within it.

Twilight souls, caught somewhere between dark and light, knowing and unknowing. Neither one thing nor another. A crossbreed race.

A human can be a real prick but maintain the capacity for good and a good hearted soul is capable of great evil. Never judge a person as absolutely one way or another because you sell the human race short when you do.

She was another world to me; she and the regular world stood side by side and made two worlds. I loved them both.

It's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

sinful motive often hides itself under the mask of reverence for another virtue.")

Highsmith's life and work would always give the appearance of a balancing act.

So I've held on to Catholicism or Zen, as practices, as fantasy futures, as possible identities. But when I actually dare to lower myself down into this emptiness—no, that sounds entirely too dualistic and willful and "courageous"—but when this seeing suddenly happens and thought relaxes, Zen drops completely away, and something much deeper is contacted, some entirely other way of being.

Boys always stared at Leeda, but they stared at Murphy harder because Leeda looked fine like china, but Murphy looked like the world's most decadent banana split. Boys were scared of both of them. Scared of Leeda because she looked too cool to touch and scared of Murphy because they were afraid she might bite them.

May looked back at the girl again. It was her, May and it wasn't.

That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.

Everything beautiful has a dark side, and some of us must dwell there, so that others can laugh in the light.

Monstrously giving birth to yourself, Admiring yourself and choking on yourself, Are you not, alas, the only tie Between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? It seems to me that you are always on the boundary.

First as a serpent, it'll cast its spell Next to your heart, curled up. Then it'll come as a dove as well, Cooing for days nonstop.

Elle n'aime pas sortir, je n'aime pas rentrer. Elle n'aime pas jouer, je n'aime pas perdre. (L'échappée belle, p.63)

I know. Brains and dicks. Maybe they're too far apart to function together.