Quotes About Uncertainty

They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.

She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why suffer twice?

I've been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence.

It isn't the sort of thing you ask questions about, because the answers are not usually answers you want to know.

The only sure camouflage was unpredictability.

Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle.

Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads, I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location.

There is a Do this or Do that with God, but not any Because.

with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there before, we knew we had been there before.

From this distance it does resemble fun. Fun is not knowing how it will end.

Their youngness is terrifying. How could I have put myself into the hands of such inexperience?

It was a question now, rather than a statement; a question with no answer.

What do you want me to do?" he whispers into the empty air. It's hard to know. Oh Jimmy, you were so funny. Don't let me down. From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face. Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion;

Think of me as a guide. Think of yourself as a wanderer in a dark wood. It's about to get darker.

Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing. They skip town or turn perfidious, or else the drop like flies and then where are you?

I was nervous. How was I to know he loved me? It might be just an affair. Why did we ever say just? Though at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.

And still, what a risk he'd taken. The woman was like an amateur car bomb: you never knew when she would explode or who she would take down with her when she did.

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

This could be the last time I have to wait. But I don't know what I'm waiting for. What are you waiting for? they used to say. That meant Hurry up. No answer was expected. For what are you waiting is a different question, and I have no answer for that one either.

It's a gamble every time you get up in the morning

He doesn't mind this, I thought. He doesn't mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other's, any more. Instead, I am his. Unworthy, unjust, untrue. But that is what happened. So Luke: what I want to ask you now, what I need to know is, Was I right? Because we never talked about it. By the time I could have done that, I was afraid to. I couldn't afford to lose you.

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

Nothing is ever settled," says Jocelyn. "Every day is different. Isn't it better to do something because you've decided to? Rather than because you have to?