Imprecision Quotes

“Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.”

“The magic of life is its imprecision, the multiple narratives constantly unfolding before us. Every step we take, every decision we make, reshuffles the deck of our lives and sets a new trajectory of possibility in motion.”

“The time of the photograph is [always] after. This imprecision accommodates the numerous successions, the end upon seismic end, in a time without time, un[re]countable: still. In this, it is a perfect crime, “l’anéantissement anéanti, la fin… privée d’elle-même.”

“So you don't think the government is responsible for anything?" "Oh, it's responsible," Rafferty says. "It's responsible for the sloppiness and imprecision of the War on Terror, for example. It's responsible for taking people's tax dollars and spending the country into debt on useless wars and pointless pork projects to buy votes. It's responsible for bailing out the banks instead of standing up for the people the banks cheated. It's responsible for plenty,”

“Strange to know nothing, never to be sureOf what is true or right or real,But forced to qualify or so I feel,Or Well, it does seem so:Someone must know.Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:Their skill at finding what they need,Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,And willingness to change;Yes, it is strange,Even to wear such knowledge--for our fleshSurrounds us with its own decisions--and yet spend all our life on imprecisions,That when we start to dieHave no idea why.”