hum and haw

You can’t constantly hum and haw your chances or you’ll just never get out of that paralysis.

"The government's right and chance to hum and haw has long expired. You are murderers. Your hand is bloody. Blood has splattered from your face, your mouth to your nails and all over you. You are the biggest supporters of terror," he told reporters in comments broadcast on the internet.

Hum′mer, something that hums.—Hum and haw, to hesitate in giving a direct answer; Humming ale, ale that froths up well, or that makes the head hum; Make things hum, to set things agoing briskly.

The technique constantly reminds us that we are watching staged reality, and though the actors flawlessly reproduce every breath and syllable, every halting hum and haw, the disconnect between words and performer brutally exposes the machinery of representation.

I'll mutter Witold Gombrowicz, hum and haw at Ryszard Kapuściński, and tentatively suggest Michal Witkowski's recently-translated Lovetown, but the only thing I can really recommend about Polish literature is a marvellous short story by Michal Olszewski, wonderfully translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones, which we ran as part of a series of short stories to commemorate the fall of the Berlin wall a couple of years back.