Quotes About Uncertainty

and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one—that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes.

We're in Borneo, can't you tell? We're skimming the treetops now, big leaves are glimmering below us, and there are coffee bushes over there, smell them?" and Marie-Laure will indeed smell something, whether because her uncle is passing coffee grounds beneath her nose, or because they really are flying over the coffee trees of Borneo, she does not want to decide.

Between whatever has happened already and whatever is to come hovers an invisible borderland, the known on one side and the unknown on the other.

Number 4: the tall, derelict bird's nest of a house owned by her great-uncle Etienne. Where she has lived for four years. Where she kneels on the sixth floor alone, as a dozen American bombers roar toward her.

You have minds. But minds are not to be trusted. Minds are always drifting toward ambiguity, toward questions, when what you really need is certainty. Purpose. Clarity. Do not trust your minds.

It seems to Werner that the space between whatever has happened already and whatever is to come hovers an invisible borderland, the known on one side and the unknown on the other. He thinks of the girl who may or may not be in the city behind him.

to raise one's hopes is to risk their falling further.

Water was a wild, capricious substance: nothing solid, nothing permanent, nothing as it appeared.

Any moment, it seemed, something could tear the sky and whatever was on the other sides would push through.

Is it dawn? She climbs the ladder and presses her ear to the trapdoor. No more sirens. Maybe the house burned

he could feel his hope wilting.

He waits until dark. Marie-Laure sits in the mouth of the wardrobe, the false back open, and listens to her uncle switch on the microphone and the transmitter in the attic. His mild voice speaks numbers into the garret. Then music plays, soft and low, full of cellos tonight . . .

How do you ever know that you are doing the right thing?

too. Who knows when the water will go out again. Her fingers travel back to the cathedral

Fog on the sea, fog in the streets, fog in the mind.

There is only chance in this world, chance and physics. Anyway

Gone or resolved to go; is there much difference?

It seems to Werner that in the space between whatever has happened already and whatever is to come hovers an invisible borderland, the known on one side and the unknown on the other.

Life can turn out a million ways. - Pg. 82

A week ago, it all seemed so secure. So settled.

Wherever her great-uncle is, could he have survived this? Could anyone? Has she?

There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules.

The war drops its question mark.

tang in the back of his throat and he bites back tears. Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one—that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes.