James T. Farrell Quotes

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

There is always room for at least two truths.

"And" seems to me closest. "And" nods toward the real. And "and" is the path to perspective. To feel and see from more angles and know all of them true, even the incomprehensible ones, even the ones that contradict one another.

For nothing was simply one thing.

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.

Life has never been All or Nothing- it's All and Nothing. Forget the binaries.

Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

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.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

There's so much grey to every story - nothing is so black and white.

I like characters who are contradictory.

Being human is being a lot of things at the same time.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

There are gray areas in everything.

I don't find anything black and white; I find grey in every person, and that is what excites me.

Beauty does not mean one thing but not something else.

That's been a huge recurring thing in growing up - allowing two things to exist in the same space even though, instinctively, they might not be designated to.

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.

the truth is often a mixed message

Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft spoken and loud, all at once.