Quotes About Ambiguity

We're both clever and stupid in equal measure.

Science is the enemy of the certain

Mr Kline," the voice said. "Would you mind putting Mlinko on?" "Mlinko seems to be dead," said Kline. "Appears or is?" "Both," said Kline

There has, I fear, developed the worst of needs, the need to know, coupled reluctantly with an awareness that I probably will, in fact, never know.

The world is a strange place , thought Haupt, alone in the dark, almost unbearably so. And yet, it is the only place I have. And I'm not even entirely sure I have it.

But this is not that kind of story, the kind meant to explain things. It simply tells things as they are, and as you know there is no explanation for how things are, at least none that would make any difference and allow them to be something else.

How much weirder, thought Kline, is it possible for my life to get? And then he pushed the thought down and tried to ignore it, afraid of what the answer might be.

At times, I become confused about the order in which things should be told. Parts of me know things that other parts do not, and sometimes I both know a thing and do not know it, or part of me knows something is true and another part knows it is not true, and there is nothing to allow me to negotiate between the two.

Brian Evenson

All my life, I'd been hurrying to get somewhere, without the slightest idea where that was.

Everybody lived like a character in a one-act play that nobody understood; getting by from one moment to the next was like trying to hold on to your hat in a gusty wind.

THERE ARE times in life when the wrong thing to do is actually the right thing to do. Maybe vice versa, too. I don't know. I haven't gotten around to testing that theory yet.

His could be the seductive face of an angel or a devil. A single stroke by the artist — or a vandal — could tilt it in favor of one or the other.

That's not important,' he said, and when Detective Wilson said that, I was sure he didn't know the answer, 'not important' being just one of the things we call that which we don't know.

But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.

Is I the insomniac's question? Are you a dendrite or a dream? Between oblivion and affection, which one is fear and which protection?

Adult life is dealing with an enormous amount of questions that don't have answers. So I let the mystery settle into my music. I don't deny anything, I don't advocate anything, I just live with it.

You lay claim to your stories; you honor, with your hard work and the best of your talent, their inspirations, and you fight to tell them well from a sense of indebtedness and thankfulness. The ambiguities, the contradictions, the complexities of your choices are always with you in your writing as they are in your life. You learn to live with them. You trust your need to have a dialogue about what you deem important.

The thrill of the uncanny lies in the piquancy of oxymoron.

Pour se repérer dans l'incertitude, il faut d'abord se perdre dans la complexité.

Maybe it's important to open up I people- people who are right there with you, not some thousand miles away in another universe. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe I should just settle for not knowing. Maybe it's just good to know that you're not the only one who doesn't know.

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst

But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me.