Quotes About Ambiguity

Its emotional character … is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency —sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying— are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

As most adults know, the distinctions between one's essential character and value and people's perceptions of that character/value are fuzzy and hard to delineate, especially in adolescence.

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

Estas mañanas peores con suelos fríos y ventanas calientes y luz despiadada...con la certidumbre en el alma de que ese día no será atravesado sino más bien escalado verticalmente que cuando al final vaya a dormir será otra vez como si cayera desde algún sitio alto y escarpado.

The air-conditioning was more like a vague gesture toward the abstract idea of air-conditioning.

One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away. But then how do you know they're monsters, then? That's the monstrosity right there, I'm starting to think. That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.

I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.' 'But then how do you know they're monsters, then?' 'That's the monstrosity right there, Boo, I'm starting to think.' 'Golly Ned.' 'That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.

Still, though. Right. Exactly.

that Joelle even now lives hand-to-lung on a grossly generous trust willed her by a man she unveiled for but never slept with, the prodigious punter's father, infinite jester, director of a final opus so magnum he'd claimed to have had it locked away.

It's not like he kept the money. It's not like he needed it. I think he especially liked the idea that the star of the show might have already moved away or recently died and there was no way to know.

The fact that twenty years have gone by and we still do not agree what this novel means, or what exactly it was trying to say, despite saying (seemingly) everything about everything, is yet another perfect analogy for the Internet. Both are too big. Both contain too much. Both welcome you in. Both push you away.

Infinite Jest (IV) Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Pam Heath (?), 'Madame Psychosis' (?); 78 mm.; 90 minutes(?); color; sound. Unfinished, unseen attempt at completion of Infinite Jest (III) UNRELEASED

sometimes in the same week. There might even be—though

All things lie dark in possibility.

This was such bad writing that it was good.

Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)

Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

A little more than kin, a little less than kind.

Ha. Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner. There's a double meaning in that.

Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing.

Your if is the only peacemaker; much virtue in if.

Until I know this sure uncertainty, I'll entertain the offered fallacy.