Deborah Tannen Quotes

You can and you can't You will and you won't You'll be damned if you do You'll be damned if you don't

The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.

If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical. If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

I'm in a Catch-22. If I don't go after a ball, I'm lazy, I'm not giving it 100 percent. If I do dive for the ball - which I did, and blew out my shoulder - it's, Why did I play it so hard?

One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.

Irony became the head that bit its tail and then there is no way out.

As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.

There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

I had to choose, I'd be so sad. They are flip sides of the same coin. I love both comedy and drama.

If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy.

Life itself is controversy.

I have fervently been on both sides of that question at different times.

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

It appears to me one of those questions which present great inconveniences whichever way it is decided.

Sometimes ‘tis necessary to be cruel in order to be kind.

It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you wont deny.

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.