“I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?”
Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality
Context: Glorious is the risk! — καλος γαρ ο κινδυνος, glorious is the risk that we are able to run of our souls never dying … Faced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed to eliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in the immortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impression on me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is not with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die — no; I neither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live for ever and ever and ever. I want this "I" to live — this poor "I" that I am and that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of the duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me.
“I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?”
Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Son, are you happy?
I don't mean to pry,
but do you dream of Heaven?
Have you ever wanted to die?”
Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker
Source: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
“I want to Live! Not Die, Not Hide, LIVE!”
Margaret Peterson Haddix Among the Hidden
Source: Among the Hidden
“I want to be a millionaire, and I don't ever want a real job.”
Carl Lewis (1961) US track & field athlete
To his University of Houston track coach, Tom Tellez, on his first day of track practice, 1979. <br class="br"> Carl Lewis.com http://www.carllewis.com/index2.shtml (URL accessed on October 21, 2008)
“All I ever wanted was to know what to do.”
Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher
Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 32