Quotes About Ambiguity

In the feeble light, it wasn't clear what I was supposed to see.

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

I think it is fair to say that during World War II there was a high sense of purpose. The country had a very clear vision of its own standing, of its own morality. It was not an ambiguous time. Today, we live in a world that is highly ambiguous, very fractured, with many of the historical, traditional values in a state of collapse, really.

Our vision of war is probably too influenced by the biggest one of all, World War II, where the forces of evil were so unambiguous and so relentless that there was no choice but to commit to total war and to demand unconditional surrender. Seldom, though, is it quite that clear cut.

All of us, we are not one thing: we're always between two worlds, and the idea of not being sure is very appealing to me.

My generation in Japan lived in limbo. We dreamed between two worlds.

I'm somebody who feels caught between two worlds a lot of the time.

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life.

It's hard to know which stars in the sky will turn into black holes. And which ones will open up worm holes into entire new universes.

I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

I don't think we should tell them what we're going to do in advance. Let them think. Worry. Wonder. Uncertainty is the most chilling thing of all.

One of the worst things about being an actor, besides people being nice to you and getting free stuff all the time - but really, one of the worst things is not knowing what's coming next. You could shoot a pilot, and they could have you on hold for six months waiting to find out what is going to happen with the show, and you're locked into it.

I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man.

For me, there is a real line between something being the worst thing in the world and the best thing in the world.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

I don't really have a lot of fun playing just straight good guys. It's not my thing. It's like Tom Hanks territory.

I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'

I don't know what's in store for me. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring.

Tomorrow is no man's gift.

We have to know that nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed, especially tomorrow.

Who knows what happens tomorrow? We'll find it tomorrow.

I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow's going to bring.

It's hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.