Quotes About Ambivalence

I still feel like I'm jumping on an elevator -- weightless and pulled down at the same time.

I have spoken before about the "yes" and the "no" alive in every person who seeks therapy. Listening to Pearl I heard the following: Yes, I would like to confide in you. No, that would displace my loyal family. Yes, I want to get help. No, that would prove I needed it. Yes, I want to change my life. No, I don't. All the things I do and everything I am have taken me this far.

My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.

Mitt problem är att jag vill röka cigarren själv och att någon annan ska tända den åt mig. Jag vill blåsa ut röken. Som en vulkan. Som ett monster. Jag vill att det ska ryka om mig. Jag vill inte vara flickan vars jobb det är att jämra sig me gäll röst på begravningar.

Certainty is the place where questions go to die.

Good is not always good.

It's not that I want you to go, it's just that I don't want you to stay." - China Sorrows -

Don't you all have somewhere else to be? It's not that I want you to go, it's just that I don't want you to stay.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Progress':a word to choke on, a word to discard and then pick up again, hurl it in the oven like coal, watch it spurl out its own name in black smoke from the chimney of the hunting lodge. I embrace it, and I repeat it, and yet I know no word I or any other human could use will ever be the right word.

Be', dipende dai soffitti alti, no? Vedi cose che non esistono. E le cose che vedi sembrano altre cose. Un uccello può essere un pipistrello. Un pipistrello può essere una busta di plastica che vola. Così va il mondo. Vedi una cosa per un'altra. Uccelli-foglie. Pipistrelli-uccelli. Ombre fatte di luci. Rumori accidentali che sembrano più significativi. È sempre così, dovunque vai.

Now he wondered why he'd bothered. He disliked having such thoughts because he wasn't above it all—he was in it—but they were hard to suppress.

No one gives a shit if you write a book or not.

Calamities and opportunities all jumbled up together and no sure way to distinguish one from the other.

Oh, Danny, it's so confusing." "Not really. You're falling in love with him. Or are already in love with him." "But am I? Or just... overwhelmed?" "Love is overwhelming.[...]

I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.

Do you trust him?" She hesitates. "Yes and no." "That means no. Trust is all or nothing.

At the end of an evening, her women friends would hug her, or a friend's husband might slip his arm around her waist to kiss her, just a little too suggestively, and the coldness in her would respond, I don't give a damn if I ever see any of you again.

years. In fact the whole apartment, which six years ago had seemed like a way station to some better place, had ended up solidifying around Sasha, gathering mass and weight, until she felt both mired in it and lucky to have it—as if she not only couldn't move on but didn't want to.

In fact the whole apartment, which six years ago had seemed like a way station to some better place, had ended up solidifying around Sasha, gathering mass and weight, until she felt both mired in it and lucky to have it—as if she not only couldn't move on but didn't want to.

Sometimes my bedroom is the best place in the world, and other times it is like a place that closes in and suffocates me. I

It's the kind of smile you smile when you're thinking someone over and trying to decide how you feel about them.

No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.