Open Ended Quotes

“You will have noticed that I didn’t give this story a pat conclusion, and that’s deliberate. Katherine (my wife and frequent coauthor, K. A. Applegate) and I were among the earliest authors to encounter fan fiction via the internet. We’ve embraced it from the start. And some part of me hopes that fanfic writers will carry this story forward. Don’t ask me what happens to these characters next, because I don’t know. Will Dekka find love, perhaps with Simone? Will Cruz and Armo? How will Sam and Astrid do in this terrifying extension of earlier trauma? Maybe you have some ideas. I built the sandbox; if you want to bring your pails and shovels and play in it, cool. It’s one of the best things about writing for young people: you are my collaborators in imagination. If I leave blanks it’s because I know you’ll fill them.”
― Michael Grant, Hero

“There was nothing funny about the situation, but I laughed anyway. I'd done the same thing during Grandpa Andy's funeral. Busted out laughing right during Father Diaz's opening prayer. I apologized to Gamma Evelyn afterward, and she told me it was okay. That life was ridiculous and absurd, and sometimes the only way to keep it from overwhelming us was to laugh right in its face.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

“Judging types are in a hurry to make decisions. Perceiving types are not. This is why science doesn’t make any serious attempt to reach a final theory of everything. It always says, “Let’s do another experiment. And another. And another.” When will the experimentation ever end? When will scientists conclude that they have now collected easily enough data to now draw definitive conclusions? But they don’t want to draw any such conclusions. That’s not how they roll. Their method has no such requirement. That’s why many of them openly say that they do not want a final theory. It will stop them, they say, from “discovering” new things. Judging types like order and structure. They like decisions, conclusions, getting things done and reaching objectives. Perceiving types are doubtful and skeptical about all of that. They frequently refer to judging types as “judgmental”, which is literally perceived as a bad thing, “authoritarian”, “totalitarian”, “fascist”, “Nazi”, and so on. Perceiving types always want to have an open road ahead of them. They never want to actually arrive. Judging types cannot see the point of not wanting to reach your destination.”
― Thomas Stark, Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason

“Clearly, binary outcomes are not very prevalent in life; they mostly exist in laboratory experiments and in research papers. In life, payoffs are usually open-ended, or, at least, variable.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“That’s what I love about what-am-I riddles or more open-ended riddles: there are always a certain set of traditional answers to those riddles, like with other riddles, but their answers are determined by whether or not they fit the criteria the riddle has, not just whether or not they fit the answer; it’s kind of like an evidence-based answer versus a multiple choice question. If I, for example, presented you with this riddle: “What is an impulse yet helps you think” (I just made that riddle up, actually), there is the traditional answer I thought of: nerve impulses. However, there are still other possibilities. For instance, a person could be all philosophical and say, ‘any impulse helps you think. Although you think recklessly, you technically are still thinking.’ With a multiple choice question, there would only be one answer, so you are very limited with riddles like that.”
― Lucy Carter, The Reformation

“So imposing your modern-day perspective on a manuscript thousands of years old is the best way to understand the Bible? Choose an interpretation that makes you feel good?”
― Sigmund Brouwer, Flight of Shadows