Quotes About Ambiguity

I cannot see life, what it's supposed to be: I'm stumped and mystified and frozen in place. Yet other times, I realize, regardless, there's a lot to be thankful for. It's perplexing! How's a soul to know?

Try to figure out what has made your life go wrong. It is like trying to figure out what is stinking up the refrigerator. It could be anything. The lid off the mayonnaise, Uncle Ron's honey wine four years in the left corner. Broccoli yellowing, flowering fast. They are all metaphors. They are all problems.

I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. It seems old, with too much makeup. I feel stuck, out of school, working odd jobs, like someone brooding, hat in hand in an anteroom, waiting for the future as if it were some hoop-skirted belle that must gather up its petticoats, float forward, and present itself to me.

Thoughts of leaving will move in, bivouac throughout the living room; they will have eyes like rodents and peer out at you from under the sofa, in the dark, from under the sink, luminous glass beads positioned in twos.

For reasons I have yet to define, Signor Arpelli stood out from his colleagues. The curled brim of his hat, perhaps. A certain mingling of gravity and levity- I thought the masks of Janus had merged in his eyes.

she understood that nothing is less obvious in a man than that which seems unquestionable.

feet on the deck over their heads and then the sound, far off but

I know. But now I don't

When little is known, much is imagined.

I wasn't quite sure what I'd just seen, but I knew it was time for me to leave.

Right and wrong were shades of meaning, not sides of a coin.

The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don't know what is happening.

I want to see the story. More than anything, I am frustrated by the fact that I'll never know how things turn out.

With one check, Rockefeller might have relieved their anxiety forever, but he wanted to avert excessive dependence and keep alive a creative ambiguity about his intentions.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the ambiguous signals from the White House reflected more than duplicity on Roosevelt's part

Is it possible that is not known?

Never sure of himself, Junior plodded ahead, always wondering where he was heading.

What makes him so problematic—and why he continues to inspire such ambivalent reactions—is that his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad.

Since I don't know where I'm going, I guess I'm in no real hurry to get there.

I don't know where I am.

Nadie puede decir si habríamos insistido, dada la pobreza de nuestros medios de investigación, si hubiésemos conocido la verdadera proporción de lo que estábamos buscando»

Y también que sigo viviendo sin consuelo y que no sé en qué me convertiré ni cómo soportaré la tarea que me queda.

La novela es el único territorio literario en el que reina la misma imprecisión y desmesura que en la existencia humana. Es un género sucio, híbrido, alborotado. Escribir novelas es un oficio que carece de glamour; somos los obreros de la literatura y tenemos que colocar ladrillo tras ladrillo, mancharnos las manos y baldarnos la espalda del esfuerzo para levantar una humilde pared de palabras que a lo peor luego se nos derrumba.

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.