A. R. Ammons Quotes

It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time.

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

I feel like humans, when you're faced with decisions, you can go up and down: duality.

I think they're very attractive,' Abe agreed. 'I just don't think they're attractive, that's all.

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.

He can't decide whether to leave his visor half open or half closed.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'

Some people put up a peace sign with one hand. Some people put up the middle finger instead. I use two hands and put up both.

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.

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

Life itself is controversy.

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

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

As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist.

I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time.

My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, "Contradiction is how we operate."

They don't have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.

Jamie: You're acting like a crazy person, what's going on? Landon: Right now, you're straddling the state line. Jamie: OK... Landon: You're in two places at once.

The world is full of contradiction.

In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.