Quotes About Uncertainty

don't let me, she hoped concretely, don't let me know too surely what he thinks of me.

Don't be so afraid all the time, she said and reached out to touch Eleanor's cheek with one finger. We never know where our courage is coming from.

God God," Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, "God God—whose hand was I holding?

You know," Theodora said slowly, "up until the last minute—when I got to the gates, I guess—I never really thought there would be a Hill House. You don't go around expecting things like this to happen." "But some of us go around hoping," Eleanor said.

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question—as 'Do you love me?'—could never be answered or forgotten.

I have no way of knowing what we may be called upon to do for ourselves.

felt steamy and sticky and chilled through, and home seemed so far away that perhaps it did not exist at all.

Perhaps—and this was her most persistent thought, the thought that stayed with her and came suddenly to trouble her at odd moments, and to comfort her—suppose, actually, she were not Natalie Waite, college girl, daughter to Arnold Waite, a creature of deep lovely destiny; suppose she were someone else?

Grant that Luke take me at my worth, she thought, or at least let me not see the difference. Let him be wise or let me be blind; don't let me, she hoped completely, don't let me know too surely what he thinks of me.

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone

The minute the light changes, she told herself firmly; there's no sense. The light changed before she was ready and in the minute before she collected herself traffic turning the corner overwhelmed her and she shrank back against the curb. She looked longingly at the cigar store on the opposite corner, with her apartment house beyond; she wondered, How do people ever manage to get there, and knew that by wondering, by admitting a doubt, she was lost.

What I am at heart, I don't know. But I do know that I love children. That's a fact.

Everyone is going to America and no one has a way of getting there. Some folks have been sent back to Russia. Some have found work in Lemberg. Some have been sent on to Cracow.

My mother, bless her, had your number when she said, "Don't hold your breath waiting for him, because nothing good comes from a graveyard.

It is only the failure of my plots I fear.

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

And then, just as quickly, the clouds returned, leaving us to walk by faith, not by sight.

Life is a very thin thread and it only takes a second to snap it

We're brought up to expect a happy ending. But there are no happy endings. There's only death waiting for us. We find love and happiness, and it's snatched away from us without rhyme or reason. We're on a deserted space ship careening mindlessly among the stars. The world is Dachau, and we're all Jews.

Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity

we shall be obliged to put forward a set of new assumptions touching speculatively on the structure of the psychical apparatus and the play of forces active in it, though we must take care not to spin them out too far beyond their first logical links, for if we do, their worth will vanish into uncertainty.

no serious book can now be sure of surviving.

For those particular illusions there may well have been a past; it is problematic, however, if there is now much of a future.