Ambiguity Quotes - Page 8

• To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Mean, Despair, Adults

  Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.56, Grove Press

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• All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

  Edward Norton

  Fun, Character, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• In highly charged political matters, one person's ambiguity may be another person's truth.

  Richard Mottram

  Political, May, Matter

  "Sir Richard Mottram" by Richard Norton-Taylor, www.theguardian.com. February 25, 2002.

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• I was writing fiction steadily, but I found that the stark determinisms of code were a welcome relief from the ambiguities of literary narrative.

  Vikram Chandra

  Writing, Relief, Fiction

  Vikram Chandra (2013). “Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software”, p.22, Faber & Faber

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• Reagan's genius as a communicator lies in his use of ambiguity. ... Ambiguity is the mother of Teflon.

  Robin Lakoff

  Mother, Lying, Teflon

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• In the ambiguity and shifting playing field of adult life, I often wish I could just fill in a dot and have someone say “Yes” and hand me a chicken leg, or “No” and slap me with an old fish.

  Rob Delaney

  Hands, Wish, Fields

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• I think to be honest, that being is inside. I meet that being in so many people that I meet everywhere in the world and when I do meet that being, in other people, what I want to ask is "How do we keep opening ourselves so that we can become as vulnerable and as willing to live in the deepest complexity and ambiguity and truth that we can?

  Eve Ensler

  Thinking, People, World

  Interview with Carolyn Roark, www.ecumenicajournal.org. February 16, 2016.

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• The framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation is unnecessary, and cannot be indulged in to narrow or enlarge the text; but where there is ambiguity or doubt, or where two views may well be entertained, contemporaneous and subsequent practical construction is entitled to the greatest weight.

  Melville Fuller

  Two, Views, Law

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• A real love story is sometimes exhausting. A romance is deliberately constructed to yield a certain result; the ambiguities are trimmed out, so it's neater and more pleasing to our hearts. But you don't live a love story, you live a life.

  Melissa Pritchard

  Real, Heart, Yield

  "Wickedly Savage Passions". Interview with Melissa Mia Hall, www.publishersweekly.com. February 23, 2004.

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• The ambiguity of poetic language answers to the ambiguity of human life as a whole, and therein lies its unique value. All interpretations of poetic language only interpret what the poetry has already interpreted.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Lying, Unique, Answers

  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Robert Bernasconi (1986). “The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays”, p.71, Cambridge University Press

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• Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values.

  Kenneth D. Wald

  Religious, Teaching, Historical

  Kenneth D. Wald, Allison Calhoun-Brown (2007). “Religion and Politics in the United States”, p.369, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I've yet to meet a person in my life who doesn't have some moral ambiguity.

  Jason Beghe

  Moral, Moral Ambiguity, Persons

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• Warped with satisfactions and terrors, woofed with too many ambiguities and too few certainties, life can be lived best not when we have the answers - because we will never have those - but when we know enough to live it right out to the edges, edges sometimes marked by other people, sometimes showing only our own footprints.

  Rosalie Maggio

  Life, People, Satisfaction

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• I want to make photographs whose very ambiguity provokes thought, rather than cuts it off prematurely. I want to make pictures that work on a more mysterious level, that approach the truth by a more circuitous route.

  John Pfahl

  Cutting, Levels, Want

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• It may be that there is so much ambiguity and ideology attached to the term 'terrorism' that it is best to avoid its use altogether, as it is likely to be twisted in public discourse to demonise the enemies of the established order, while exempting state violence from legal and moral scrutiny.

  Richard A. Falk

  Order, Enemy, Violence

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The fact that Universal Jurisdiction exists in relation to serious international crimes does convey two important aspects of the global reality: first, that such individuals would be held accountable if international law was applied without regard to geopolitics, and second, that there is enough ambiguity about the reach of UJ that it inhibits such individuals and conveys an impression of de facto criminality.

  Richard A. Falk

  Reality, Law, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?'

  Mohsin Hamid

  Book, Echoes, Reader

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• Americans always think they have to lead. I'm interested in ambiguity.

  Mary Harron

  Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• It wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.

  Richard LaGravenese

  Character, Ideas, Issues

  Source: collider.com

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• For though we may be the Earth's gardeners, we are also its weeds.  And we won't get anywhere until we come to terms with this crucial ambiguity about our role - that we are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.

  Michael Pollan

  Weed, Roles, Earth

  Michael Pollan (2007). “Second Nature: A Gardener's Education”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.

  William Safire

  Eye, Hot, Ems

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• Yet again, an ancient answer echoes across the centuries: Listen! Listen to stories! For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-upped-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another's story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy-and therefore our very human-ness, the ambiguity and incongruity, that lie at the core of the human condition.

  Ernest Kurtz

  Lying, Echoes, Mirrors

  Ernest Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham (2009). “The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning”, p.63, Bantam

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• I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Criminals, Defense, Roles

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• Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Lying, Mean, Self

  Joyce Carol Oates (1992). “The Oxford Book of American Short Stories”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

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• A photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photograph are often contradictory. These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

  John Berger

  Photographer, Contradiction, Natural

  John Berger, Jean Mohr (2016). “Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography”, p.4, Bloomsbury Publishing

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