Quotes About Ambiguity

In my experience, lights at the end of the tunnel tend to flicker out.

WHAT IT IS It is what it is. But what is it? What it is— Some soft tautology whose terms are touch Time to give, time to give it up.

In other words, she wanted it both ways. There is much to be learned from wanting something both ways.

Pharmakon means drug, but as Jacques Derrida and others have pointed out, the word in Greek famously refuses to designate whether poison or cure. It holds both in the bowl.

Een vriend zegt dat gender voor hem net zoiets is als kleur. Gender en kleur delen een zekere ontologische onbepaaldheid: het klopt niet helemaal om te zeggen dat een voorwerp een kleur ís, noch om te zeggen dat het een kleur hééft. Ook de context verandert: 'alle katten zijn grijs', et cetera. Ook is kleur niet echt iets 'vrijwilligs'. Maar geen van deze formuleringen betekent dat het voorwerp in kwestie 'kleurloos' is.

We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try.

there are the parents, then the sons, then the daughter, then the pigs in the pig-pen and the hens in the henhouse, then the apprentice and then, right at the bottom, the serving maids. Agnes believes her position, as new daughter-in-law, to be ambiguous, somewhere between apprentice and hen. Agnes

Do you think, Daniel," she said to him, rolling over onto her back so that she was able to look out of the window while she spoke, "that we might have reached the end of our story?

This is a different man, surely, from the one who ordered Contrari's death. It cannot have been him. This is her husband, who loves her, or seems to; that was the ruler of Ferrara. They are the same man, they are different men, the same yet different.

Iris wonders sometimes how she would explain Alex, if she needed to. How would she begin? Would she say, we grew up together? Would she say, but we're not related by blood? Would she say that in her bag she carries a pebble he gave her more than twenty years ago? And that he doesn't know this?

Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.

the poem is a dice throw on a patch of darkness that may or may not glow

I am besieged by contradiction.

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?

Det är ju med de kyrksamma som med trubadurer och diktläsare, man vet aldrig riktigt när de tänker bli pinsamma

But when I stood there and saw that the end of the journey was as vague and unreachable as the beginning had been, I realized I didn't care. No, more than that: I was relieved. I didn't want an ending, didn't want to get to the full stop of our story.

Funny how my status seemed to change depending on the eyes of the beholder. To Drew I was a Nought and would never be anything else. Lucas called me a Cross. Where did that leave me? On one side or the other or stuck somewhere in the middle? 'Lucas,

Incierto es, en verdad, lo porvenir. ¿Quién sabe lo que va a pasar? Pero incierto es también lo pretérito, ¿quién sabe lo que ha pasado?   ANTONIO MACHADO Juan de Mairena

la ragione e il torto non si dividon mai con un taglio cosí netto, che ogni parte abbia soltanto dell'una o dell'altro.

a form of waiting that, depending on the circumstances, can resemble fascination, terror, curiosity, or hope.

Predictions are difficult to make, particularly when they concern the future." —Pierre Dac

Quizá contestes a esta postal, quizá encuentre una carta tuya cuando vuelva a casa, quizá vengas a buscarme. Me parece que estoy harto de tanto "quizá".

the story of Offa's rise to power is frustratingly obscure.

There is no solution because there is no problem.