Nathan Englander Quotes

I like characters who are contradictory.

The great thing about the public is that they're quite capable of believing two absolutely contrary views at the same time.

I consider myself a natural optimist. I like the dark side of things.

I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time.

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

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.

I think there's an awful lot of me in Big Bird, but Oscar is pretty much - I think I know how he thinks because he thinks exactly the opposite of what I think is a good way to be.

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.

I guess I found it useful to realise that everything is true at once, you know? You can pull back and say, 'Everything will be fine,' but you can also be in a situation and say, 'Not everything is going to be fine.'

Of course, we're all a mass of contradictions.

I personally don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

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

I am a man of contradictions, I suppose.

I both love and do not love; and am mad and not mad.

I am a deeply superficial person.

I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.

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

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.

I think people have a hard time dealing with a bunch of things at once. They can't have something be disturbing and funny at the same time. They can't have that kind of combination. Which is weird to me because I feel complicated about most things.

It's a weird dynamic - I guess there is a fine line between hope and sadness. Sometimes you can be feeling both at the same time.

There are many who feel consciously hopeful and unconsciously hopeless, and there are few for whom it is the other way around.

I tend to be pessimistic. I want to believe in hope.

I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.