“Looking but not seeing is the hearing but not understanding of the eye.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The more I protested about this ambiguity, the more Joanna pointed out to me that it was both a terrible and wonderful part of life: terrible because you can't count on anything for sure—like certain good health and no possibility of cancer; wonderful because no human being knows when another is going to die—no doctor can absolutely predict the outcome of a disease. The only thing that is certain is change. Joanna calls all of this 'delicious ambiguity.' 'Couldn't there be comfort and freedom in no one knowing the outcome of anything and all things being possible?' she asked. Was I convinced? Not completely. I still wanted to believe in magic thinking. But I was intrigued.”
― Gilda Radner, It's Always Something

“It is still cheating, even if nobody comes.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. Unheimlich is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich, and not of the second. [...] On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the Unheimlich, for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny

“We're almost a whole shadow now from far away.”
― Emily Skaja, Brute: Poems

“He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon.”
― Steven Millhauser, Little Kingdoms

“As always, the soucouyant seemed more lonely than bad. Maybe that was her trick, her ability to make it so you couldn't decide if she was a monster.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“Fancy words and ambiguous notions make you feel like your argument is valid but it exudes multiple logical fallacies, which make you continue to search for a valid point.”
― Jeffrey G. Duarte

“Unlike meaning, the truth always survives translation.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“So art becomes not communication but mystification.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I will not attempt to describe how I got through the next few days. There are desolations of the spirit which can only be hinted at. I sat there huge-eyed in the wreck of myself.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Good-bye to the past, with its mysteries which would never be fully unfolded.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

“I can't make out what you're up to . . . You strike me as having mysterious purposes — vast designs.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“What follows is ambiguous and sometimes tortuously told. Man's searchings and his strugglings are ambiguous and vowed to hidden ways. Those who live by that dark light will understand.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“You took me once
to an older part of earth
I'd never seen—
where monsters were born
and killed.
They sacrificed everything
and nothing
for a taste of this
life.”
― Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses

“How can one discover what he feels?"

"I thought he might perhaps behave — quite differently with you?"

"No, no. We seem to know each other well but I think that's just because I parade my feelings. He's affectionate, detached, passive, absolutely passive."

"He's never told you about that place?"

"He's never talked about himself at all.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“Most thoughtful,"...[he said] politely. This cheerfulness was ambiguous, Had she determined to ignore ...[the] coup entirely--an established tactic, most irritating to the innovator but hard to sustain over long periods of time--or had she already evolved her counter-strategy?”
― Tom Holt, Lucia Triumphant

“Det var liksom helt riktig at han ikke hadde spurt. At han bare hadde tatt sjansen og at han nå ville få blod på sin eggeskallfargede silkesofa. Den slags overraskelser får bare de helt selvtilfredse og autistiske.”
― Suzanne Brøgger, Creme fraiche

“welcome to the future

I have come into the aware
where the gilt edges are”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“I carried you a long way

into my mirror, believing you would carry me

back out.”
― Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems

“Fate behind the pillars
where something fell.”
― Marianne Boruch, Cadaver, Speak

“Sometimes the same position gets boring.”
― Claudia Arana

“In the depth of thoughts and reaches of life.
That's where you can find me.”
― Mohammed Anousheh

“What's the deal that turn people and me into heartless monster?
The Truth of world? (which I assume that is sad)
Not getting proper thinking education?
Bad charismatic?
Biases and ignorance?
Them?
Me?
None of them?
Maybe It's irrelevant? Who said that I'm turning into monster.
No I'm not. I'm just thinking based on evidence & my own biases.
You know... It gets complicated with how we represent ourselves and.”
― Mohammad Anousheh

“In the depth of thoughts and reaches of life.
That's where you can find me.”
― Mohammad Anousheh

“We even consider going into the church, and then change our minds because they've altered their sign to say:
DON'T LET WORRIES KILL YOU.
LET THE CHURCH HELP.
Frankly, that's a little too ambiguous for my liking.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect