Quotes About Ambiguity

I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong.

I never know what I mean in my telegrams – especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive.

I don't think I can attempt to say now what it was. Some day—perhaps.

If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children—? We

There was a sort of spell in the sense that nobody in the world knew where she was. It was the first time in her life that this had happened; somebody, everybody appeared to have known before, at every instant of it, where she was; so that she was now suddenly able to put it to herself that that hadn't been a life.

It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?

The" thing was the thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he had had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was—the implication here was complete. Not

But James, as an artist, was deeply suspicious of what gave him pleasure, or indeed satisfaction. In his own complex sensibility, there was an ambiguity about most things, and this moved him towards subtlety when he approached character, drama, and scene, and nudged him towards many modifying subclauses when he wrote a sentence. Nothing came to him simply.

If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?

She had taken his measure; he was made incorrigibly to try, irredeemably to fail – to be, in short, eternally defeated and eternally unaware. He wouldn't rage he couldn't, for the citadel might, in that case, have been carried by his assault; he would only spend his life in walking round and round it, asking everyone he met how in the name of goodness one did get in.

Per me, soggiunse, - uno può amare una cosa o non amarla, non si può amar tutto, evidentemente: ma non si può neppur tentare di farsene una ragione, non si sa dove questo possa condurre. Ci son sentimenti buoni che possono avere cattivissime ragioni. non vi pare, e cattivi che ne vantano di buonissime.

was all very interesting." She continued to look at me.  "You don't think that," she then simply stated. "What have I to gain

Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language subject to varieties of interpretation. What

It isn't a question of any beauty,' said Maggie; 'it's only a question of the quantity of truth.' 'Oh the quantity of truth!' the Prince richly though ambiguously murmured.

And yet poor Babcock liked him, and remembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, this was not a reason for giving him up.

In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing

Oh," said Strether, "what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure or even to understand.

Sometimes I think I'm an artist. Once in a great while I even think I may be a visionary, but never a prophet, a seer.

To taste it once is to taste it forever --- life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no stakes.

So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.

It's my memory, and what happened between that moment 10 or 15 years ago and now, there's a lot of gray area.

Ambiguity and the horror of possibility play a part in so many of my favorite horror stories: Shirley Jackson's 'We Will Always Live in the Castle,' Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves,' Victor LaValle's 'Big Machine,' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Stewart O'Nan's 'The Speed Queen,' and so many more.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'