Quotes About Ambiguity

When you're on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they're actually there, but most of the time you can't tell the difference from the two.

E la strada è inquietudine, sempre e comunque, perché non c'è dubbio che ho capito male la vita e l'ho coltivata ancor peggio, ma tanto, mio caro, il risultato è lo stesso.

Wij hebben het nu over jou. Vergeet niet, ik ben notaris geweest. Ik maak die dingen altijd af. Wat wil jij worden?' 'Ik weet het niet.' Hij begreep dat dat geen goed antwoord was, maar het was het enige, zelfs als iemand graag altijd alles afmaakte. Hij had geen flauw idee. Eigenlijk wist hij zeker dat hij nooit iets wou, maar ook nooit iets zóú worden. De wereld was al boordevol met mensen die iets waren, en de meesten waren er duidelijk niet gelukkig mee.

But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

In Pauline and Mal's house, nothing was simple. In her parents' house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.

The writer's job, after all, is not to dictate meaning, but to give the reader enough pieces to create his or her own satisfying meaning. The story is truly finished—and meaning is made—not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters the story and fills that little ambiguous space, completing the circuit, letting the power flow through.

But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on. He

Most? What does that mean?

She thought, as she would often for many years, of the photograph from that day, with the one golden feather inside it: Was it a portrait of her, or her daughter? Was she the bird trying to batter its way out, or was she the cage?

they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

a haze of formless, pervasive emotion, nothing she could grasp, but full of looming thoughts that appeared from nowhere, startling her, then receded into whiteness again before she was even sure what she had seen.

I'm not saying there aren't bad mothers, she says. Just that you don't always know. What makes them do something, or not do something. Most of us, we're trying our best.

She replaces the phone number on the board, her damp fingers smudging the ink so that the digits blur as if in a strong wind, or underwater.

But I didn't know where she was going, Hannah whispers into the dark. I didn't know she was really going anywhere.

She thought, as she would often for many years, of the photograph from that day, with the one golden feather inside it: Was it a portrait of her, or her daughter? Was she the bird trying to batter its way free, or was she the cage?

He never completed the sentence, but in his imagined future, he floated away, untethered.

In her parents' house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.

Na casa de Pauline e Mal, nada era simples. Na casa dos pais de Mia, as coisas eram boas ou ruins, certas ou erradas, úteis ou desnecessárias. Não havia meio-termo. Ali ela descobriu que tudo tinha nuance, um lado não revelado ou profundidades inexploradas. Tudo merecia ser analisado com mais atenção.

Mas o problema das regras (...) era que subentendiam um jeito errado e um jeito certo de fazer as coisas, quando, na verdade, na maior parte do tempo havia apenas jeitos, sendo que nenhum deles era exatamente certo ou errado e nada podia indicar com certeza de que lado da linha você estava.

I don't have a plan, I'm afraid...But then, no one really does, no matter what they say.

Pearl was smarter than any of them and yet she seemed comfortable with everything she didn't know: she lingered comfortably in the gray spaces.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

He who looks in through an open window never sees so many things as he who looks at a shut window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more gloomy, or more dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What we can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind the panes of a window. In that dark luminous hollow, life lives, life dreams, life suffers.

The world only goes round by misunderstanding.