Quotes About Uncertainty

it felt a bit like five chapters into an Agatha Christie novel, everyone milling around, looking vaguely suspect.

If you don't like the teaching and you don't like the research – why are you doing this?" "Because it's what I thought I wanted six years ago." … Behind him, I could see my bookshelves, crammed with monographs and reference works, all the effluvia of the last six years. "If I don't do this, what do I do?"(437-438)

home, they knew the dreary routines life held in store for them, whereas at sea anything could happen;

Sleeping and waking—for him the states grew ever less distinct. Sleep gained in truth as waking lost the arrogance of certainty. Dreams, three-D and portentous, sported a logic no less satisfactory than that of what, by mere consensus, was called the real. Categories dissolved; things floated free of their names, and a kind of geriatric Buddhism became ever more unquestioned and serene.

Key West—a town of people passing through, looking around, waiting, hoping for something special to happen, then not having a clue what was going on when it did.

So that whether the pain of a wound in the groin (cæteris paribus) is greater than the pain of a wound in the knee—or Whether the pain of a wound in the knee is not greater than the pain of a wound in the groin—are points which to this day remain unsettled.

My world is falling apart.

You can think a thing over many times and still have no idea how you'll answer the question, if ever it's asked.

It's a funny things about human nature. Nobody ever wonders why they've got a healthy brother or a perfect kiddie. Anything goes wrong, though, we soon start why, oh why...

I can't tell anymore when I'm asleep and when I'm awake, or which is worse.

There is no safer. There's not even safe, never has been.

I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.

I don't know what I'm doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I'll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I'll think about a career path.

I am an iceberg drifting toward the edge of the map.

Trying to figure out what you want to do, who you want to be, is messy as hell; the best anyone can hope for is to figure out the next step.

It was like looking at a knot, knowing it was a knot, but not knowing how to untie it. I had no map for this life.

The world turns upside down every day.

The girl reflected back from the window in front of me has poinsettias growing out of her belly and head. She's the shape of a breakfast-link sausage standing on broomstick legs, her arms made from twigs, her face blurred with an eraser. I know that this is me, but it's not me, not really. I don't know what I look like. I can't remember how to look.

I can never tell with moments of silence. They're so... silent. Empty.

I don't know what I'm doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out.

I stand on the edge of a cliff, wondering if I'm going to fall or jump.

It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.

Trying to figure out what you want to do, who you want to be, is messy as hell; at best anyone can hope for is to figure out the next step.

Tell me this is a nightmare