Tom Junod Quotes

The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

He was a great thundering paradox of a man.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Nobody's all good or bad, and nobody's all light or dark. Every human being has so many different aspects and facets to them. And there can be something noble and something really dark and dangerous going on in a person all at the same time.

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

I'm a nice guy, but not all the time. There are these personalities in me, so many of them. They come out at strange times. I can be one way, then five minutes later I'm another way.

It's an odd beast, fame. It's got multiple personalities.

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.

I have found human nature a bit contradictory in my living of it. Human life is incredibly strange.

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

In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical.

Such, Polly, are your sex - part truth, part fiction; - Some thought, much whim and all a contradiction.

It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.

The world asks us to be quickly readable, but the thing about human beings is that we are more than one thing. We are multiple selves. We are massively contradictory.

I'm a Gemini. Know what that means? There are two very different sides to me.

I always respond to characters who have depth. I'm always interested in those people. They're the ones who surprise you.

I would describe myself as eclectic: Bohemian in thought and conservative in action - or maybe it's the other way around.

It's very human to try to put things into boxes, and it's hard for us to reconcile with grey areas, and yet somehow, that's the area I find the most poetic, the juiciest.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

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.

Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

Sharp and mild, dull and keen, well known and strange, dirty and clean, where both the fool and wise are seen: All this am I, have ever been, - in me dove, snake and swine convene!