Quotes About Ambivalence

I have to choose what I detest – either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born.

Nothing satisfies me, nothing consoles me; everything that has been and that hasn't been jades me. I don't want to have my soul and don't want to renounce it. I want what I don't want and renounce what I don't have. I can't be nothing nor be everything: I'm the bridge between what I don't have and what I don't want.

Should you ask me if I'm happy, I shall answer that I'm not.

I aspire to nothing. Life wounds me. I feel uncomfortable where I am and uncomfortable where I think I could be.

Caesar aptly defined what ambition is all about when he said: 'Better to be first in the village than the second in Rome!' I'm nothing in the village and nothing in any Rome. The corner grocer is at least respected from the Rua da Assunção to the Rua da Vitória; he's the Caesar of a square city block. Me superior to him? In what, if nothingness admits neither superiority nor inferiority, nor even comparison?

To organise our life in such a way that it becomes a mystery to others, that those who are closest to us will only be closer to not knowing us. That is how I've shaped my life, almost without thinking about it, but I did it with so much instinctive art that even to myself I've become a not entirely clear and definite individual.

I don't know if this makes me suffer or if I simply accept it as my indifferent fate into which questions of suffering or acceptance do not enter.

I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born. Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.

I desire what I do not desire and renounce what I do not have. I can be neither nothing nor everything: I'm just the bridge between what I do not have and what I do not want.

But I also see that in order to flee from all this I must either master it or repudiate it. I do not master it because I cannot rise above reality and I do not repudiate it because, whatever I may dream, I always remain exactly where I am.

Quando olhaste para trás, Não supus que era por mim. Mas sempre olhaste, e isso faz Que fosse melhor assim.

Should I one day take an earthly woman to wife, pray for me the following: that she at any rate be sterile. But also ask, should you pray for me, that I never come to have this hypothetical wife.

Tenho que escolher o que detesto — ou o sonho, que a minha inteligência odeia, ou a ação, que a minha sensibilidade repugna; ou a ação, para que não nasci, ou o sonho, para que ninguém nasceu. Resulta que, como detesto ambos, não escolho nenhum; mas, como hei-de, em certa ocasião, ou sonhar ou agir, misturo uma coisa com outra.

I would have liked to play in New York and be close to my family and friends, but since there is nothing I can do about it, I really don't care where I go.

Some days I think I would definitely like to move abroad but then, other days, I think I don't fancy it at all.

It's fantastic to have the opportunity to work abroad, and do all that, but there is a certain point where you're just like, 'Oh, I'd love to work at home.'

Having a child, that's always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

I have to say I like Edinburgh, but I'm not a big fan of the Festival - I like it but I'm not a massive fan.

I didn't understand 3-D in the fifties and I can't say I get it now either. I just don't see what the big deal is.

I would love to love Saul Bellow, but by page fifty of 'Herzog', something within me has wandered into another room.

I took some fights where I didn't care if I won or lost.

I don't want to be in the film business. I'm not even sure it's a business.

Dad had a way of defining himself. He couldn't put his finger on whether it was rock 'n' roll or country.