Quotes About Complexity

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?

I find that people aren't all one thing. One rather wishes they were for simplicity's sake, but isn't the truth that people are good and bad, simple and complicated, happy and sad, frightened and courageous? It's all a mix. We learn to take in everything about a person as disparate parts to the whole, and it's the whole that we love, even at moments when the other isn't who we wish her to be.

What time has ever been a simple time for those who are living it?

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order.

What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches!

Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding.

And I do want to assure you: I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

I can only assume that she was like all of us—a complicated being, composed of more than one man's impressions.

Well... why is a hard question to answer in any language.

Que quantidade incrível de fatores constitui um único ser humano! Em quantas camadas nós funcionamos, e que quantidade de influências recebemos de nossas mentes, corpos, histórias, famílias, cidades, almas e almoços!

Why is a hard question to answer in any langauage.

of her—and so I know nothing about her, beyond what Frank told me. I tend to believe that his descriptions of her were truthful, only because he was so truthful. But just because he described your mother truthfully doesn't necessarily mean he described her accurately. I can only assume that she was like all of us—a complicated being, composed of more than one man's impressions.

why is a hard question to answer in any language

I believe I have a certain darkness within me, that nobody can see. It's always in there, far out of reach. And being with all those different men - it satisfies that darkness.

I love him too and believe he loves me, but does he like me, which is not the same as love?

And why should I do such a thing- tell you something that can only dismay you? Well, that is the nature of love: it is brutal in its demands.

What I've learned, Uncle, in a life you despise, is that everything we do has more than one consequence, and half those or more we never anticipate.

They're called cliches because they're true, you know. Besides, life is quite complicated enough...

what was she like? she loved him, really loved him then, for an instant. this, this was easier.

Half the trouble in human relations arises from expecting human beings to conform to a single one-dimensional image. We are all hydra-headed monsters. But most people never learn that.

He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.

There's no summing-up, but a sense of incompleteness. After years of building up each unique personality, in the end there is no moment of putting lines beneath the sum and adding up to see what it all amounts too.

She thought she might like him if only he wouldn't so excessively like her.