Quotes About Uncertainty

She tried to think of a number she could ring, or a site online, but there was nowhere she could find out what she needed to know. It was all about tomorrow: warm fronts, cold snaps, showers expected. No one ever stopped to describe yesterday's weather.

She misses the surety of Soviet patriotism that she grew up with,

They wrestle with why it has turned out so badly, unsure whom to blame.

We are always waiting for something bad. If something good happens, we are sure something bad will follow.

David set his foot in a gap higher up the barbed wire...When would the searchlight come?They could not be certain of hitting him in the dark...and if they did not hurry, he would be over...Why didn't they hurry up. Then he stopped. He would run no more.When the beam of light caught him,they should see him walking away quite calmly. Then they would not enjoy it so much; they would feel cheated. The thought filled David with triumph. I am David

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

You always make me feel strange." His gaze sharpened, and she plowed ahead. "I don't mean that in the negative. But you do, and have, ever since that night I met you. I can't say I rightly felt that way before that night, though there was something about you across the theater that made me want to get you to smile at me in return. Still, it was that night we met. I had never felt such a reaction to a man before. Something tight and uncertain and exciting. Wild.

Time is a blind guide.

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.

The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives

being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions

exI feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who I further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.

The Fury of Sunsets" Something cold is in the air, an aura of ice and phlegm. All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it. The horizon bleeds and sucks its thumb. The little red thumb goes out of sight. And I wonder about this lifetime with myself, this dream I'm living. I could eat the sky like an apple but I'd rather ask the first star: why am I here? why do I live in this house? who's responsible? eh?

Had she punished him enough? How could she be sure?

She wasn't sure she WANTED to live happily ever after.

The trouble with dying," she'd told Jeannie once, "is that you don't get to see how everything turns out. You won't know the ending.

He lifted his hand to knock, but then he stopped. He could go neither forward nor back, so he simply stayed that way—hand frozen in the air.

Oscar did not know what he was supposed to be feeling right now, what all the adults behind him would be expecting him to feel. He did not even know what he was, in fact, feeling. Except, whatever it was, it was a lot. Too much. More than bodies could hold.

What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?

Hugging himself, Oscar leaned against the pantry wall. For two days all he had wanted was for Caleb to come back, and now he was back and Oscar had made a mess of things: he had angered half the customers and confused the other half, and the coin boxes did not look as they should, and [rich, noble] people were complaining about him, and he couldn't look at anybody, and [redacted] was dead, and Oscar was odd. 'What if he doesn't keep me?

The woods do not mean you well.