Timothy Egan Quotes

No one will ever know the complete truth.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing.

I never know how much of what I say is true.

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

Reality isn't straightforward or easily accessible.

We just do not know what is normal.

In my long experience, one thing I know is that truth is elusive.

Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.

What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

XXVIII "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a rock, a mighty fortress; "Often have I been to it, "Even to its highest tower, "From whence the world looks black." "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a breath, a wind, "A shadow, a phantom; "Long have I pursued it, "But never have I touched "The hem of its garment." And I believed the second traveller; For truth was to me A breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom, And never had I touched The hem of its garment.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.

I hate not knowing what to believe anymore. I hate not knowing what's real.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

doubts, like facts, are stubborn things.

A lie was something that hadn't happened but might just as well have.

Nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad, but somewhere between reality falls.