Top 22 Ambivalence Quotes

‘The Simpsons’ is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.

‘Hispanic’ is a reference to Hispania, the name by which Spain was known in the Roman period, and there has always been strong ambivalence toward Spain in its former colonies.

Some people have human muses – mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.

Often, if there’s something that I want to do, but somehow can’t get myself to do, it’s because I don’t have clarity. This lack of clarity often arises from a feeling of ambivalence – I want to do something, but I don’t want to do it; or I want one thing, but I also want something else that conflicts with it.

I think that social migration to another economic class requires a kind of negotiating with yourself. And also, there’s so much ambivalence in your heart about who you are and who you’re really not.

From the beginning, there have been some religious leaders who greeted the funding of faith-based social services by government with ambivalence.

I’ve always had a lot of ambivalence about fame and celebrity.

Even criticism is more interesting when the writer’s authority does not only come through this omniscient narrator, but through questions, ambivalence, vulnerability. A mind questioning and on the move, not just settling down and declaring – that’s one of the most interesting possibilities.

There’s a panic, a rush, to this ‘achievement’ of fame. There’s also the ambivalence of fame: the love of it and the hatred of it. We sometimes hate the famous while, at the same time, straining to achieve fame oneself.

Most women would say they relate to ‘Hedda Gabler’ – there’s a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine – we have some of Hedda’s qualities and traits.

I’ve always been fascinated by the operation of memory – the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty, and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It’s probably this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you’ll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

Magneto has a whole lot of complexity to him. Emotionally, he’s coming from a very damaged place. I like the ambivalence of it. I want the audience leaving the theater wondering, asking the questions themselves rather than being spoon-fed like a lot of these super-villain characters.

I worked with fantastic actors, fantastic directors. People I would never otherwise have met. Was I limited? Yes. Did I use it as I could have? No. But I was always ambivalent about Hollywood and what I wanted. And ambivalence in our business is no good for success.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety.

I may write about place and displacement, but what I’m really writing about is dispersion, evasion, ambivalence: not so much a subject as a move in everything I write.

Whatever ambivalence I felt about my own career, Frankie more than made up for it with his ambition and tenacity.

I think if a poet wanted to lead, he or she would want the message to be unequivocally clear and free of ambiguity. Whereas poetry is actually the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.

Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 – confusion even. And I think that’s hard to capture in journalism.