Quotes About Ambiguity

Ich bin auf Erfahrungen angewiesen, die ich nicht begrifflich fassen kann, die mich hilflos machen und von daher narrativ.

Nostradamus wasn't often right, but he sure was often.

Americans live in a twilight world between a sense of loss and a sense of resigned acceptance.

I don't know how

It comes in black and blue, indecisive beige.

Jesus has to be crying up there somewhere. Or laughing hysterically. I can't figure out which one.

She, Madame M for Mistake, could not predict the future — her own or anybody else's. She could not even predict one hour from now. Not one minute. Not one second. The future was un-predictable.

It isn't deep, the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn't miss a beat. It is...too...deep! he insisted, outraged.

Tell me, are you still hung up on that boy?' 'Excuse me?' Schuyler asked, holding a test tube. 'Nothing.' Kingsley shrugged innocently. 'If that's how you like to play it.

I am a woman pretending to be a man, pretending to be this ship's first officer, pretending to be a pirate, pretending to be innocent of murder … I begin to lose track of all the roles I am playing.

en hun gedachten nemen nu de zachte en onbestemde kleuren van de schemering aan.

We use the word love in such a sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely everything.

I told the waiter I was looking for a hotel whose name I didn't know on a street whose name I didn't know and could he help me; we both laughed and he said: Aren't we all.

I believe she imbued my body thus, finding every touch enhanced by ambiguity of intention, as if it too required translation, and so each touch branched out, became a variety of touches.

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.

A criterion based on adjectives is always ambiguous.

I had learned to hide my soul, or perhaps I was confused. Northumbrian or Dane? Which was I? What did I want to be?

In the dark, lord, all cats are black.

in uncertainty lies opportunity.

How many's that?" I asked the shepherd. "Jiggit and mumph, lord," he said. "Is that enough?" "It's enough, lord." "Kill the rest then," I said. "Jiggit and mumph?" Willibald asked, still shivering. "Twenty and five," I said. "Yain, tain, tether, mether, mumph. It's how shepherds count. I don't know why. The world is full of mystery.

People like mystery. They want nothing explained, because when things are explained then there is no hope left.

No one should know their fate too clearly. No life can flourish in the shadow of the future.

I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.

She was struggling, as she had always struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.