Quotes About Complexity

I return to problems i can't solve, not because i am an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end.

I can't catch her by copying her, I can't draw her with a borrowed stencil. She is all the things a lover should be and quite a few a lover should not. Pin her down? She's not a butterfly. I'm not a wrestler. She's not a target. I'm not a gun. Tell you what she is? She's not Lot no. 27 and I'm not one to brag.

I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me.

I love you. You've loved other people but you still left them. It's not that simple. I don't want to be another scalp on your pole.

Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.

I think we are worlds compressed into human form.

I am civilised. My feelings are not.

Something as straightforward as a difference could lead to something as complex as a breakdown.

Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world.

What is there to say about love ? You could sweep up all the words and stack them in the gutter and love wouldn't be any different, wouldn't feel any different, the hurt in the heart, the headachy desire that hardly submits to language. What we can't tame we talk about.

Our contradictions are never so to ourselves.

He would love her if she were a wolf that tore out his heart. And he wondered what that said about love.

Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not.

Take two people. Slice lengthways. Boil with the lid on. Add a marriage, a past, another woman. Sugar to taste. Pass through a chance meeting. Lubricate sparingly. Serve on a bed of – or is it in a bed of –? Use fresh and top with raw emotion.

The earth is round and flat at the same time. This is obvious. That it is round appears indisputable; that it is flat is our common experience, also indisputable. The globe does not supersede the map; the map does not distort the globe.

I love coming home – and my idea of happiness is to come home to someone I love. We were not able to resolve that difference and what I didn't know was how something as straightforward as a difference could lead to something as complex as a breakdown. The sudden unexpected abandonment, constellated as it was around the idea/impossibility of home, lit a fuse that spat and burned its way towards a walled up opening, smothered in time like an anchorite, was my mother.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

This isn't a head/heart split or a thinking/feeling split. It is emotional matrix. I can juggle different

I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.

everyone who is interesting has a past

As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.

Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that. Oh Yeah? I said. How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality? Hitler loved dogs Mom said without hesitation.

Everyone has something good about them, she said. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that. Oh yeah? I said. How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality? Hitler loved dogs, Mom said without hesitation.