Quotes About Uncertainty

Sempre più spesso mi sembra di aggirarmi senza meta, in attesa che qualcosa mi accada, qualcosa che cambierà tutto e verso cui tende tutta la mia vita.

Kau tak tahu apa-apa soal keberanian. Untuk menjadi berani, harus ada yang dipertaruhkan. Aku datang tanpa mempertaruhkan apa pun.

Nothing like life, it questions with either no answers or messy ones.

Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and wee are a flyspeck in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting, easily swallowed.

It wasn't meant to be. Or maybe it was meant not to be.

the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't.

It wasn't so much the whistling [of the rockets] itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and the impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict.

A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you.

She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'Why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us. What

I've read, Monsieur Boustouler, that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise. That was how I felt, disoriented, suspended in confusion, stripped of my compass.

If you look at things as they are, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one's conduct. Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater. What happens ultimately, you do not know. In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters. Nothing whatever...

Under the circumstances the only honest answer an intelligent person can give to the question 'Is there a God?' is to say, 'I do not know.

It was almost like I was expecting to get crushed.

But tonight was the night. Chloe and Jake were finally going to tell their parents. Tomorrow, I could be planning my boyfriend's funeral.

I mean, they're not actually going to murder you. Right?

So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.

Norah looked at her son's tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.

This is what he knew that Paul didn't: the world was precarious and sometimes cruel. He'd had to fight hard to achieve what Paul simply took for granted.

You're right, Norah, anything can happen, anytime. But what goes wrong isn't your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.

Think of it, Dad. What if I have it in me to do that, and I don't try?

It's always like this after a few days here. I start to lose my bearings. The surface is one way, but then there are all these other things going on, sometimes going back decades, swirling undercurrents that I just don't understand. [p. 336]

You're right, Norah, anything can happen, any time. But what goes wrong is not your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.

How was it possible to let a child grow up and go out into that dangerous and unpredictable world?