“What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very
different things.”

“If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.”

“You're such a nice boy, what do you want to go off and get killed in the War for?”

“… there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”

“You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.”

“In my early 20s, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted. And if you're just getting to know yourself while you're in a serious relationship—well, it's almost like when you go through clothing phases where it's all Banana Republic all the time, and then it's something else. It's like you're trying on different personalities to see what fits, but there is that real you in there somewhere.”

“You can live your life two ways: You can use your language to manipulate. You can use it as a tool to get what you want. But the problem with that is that it assumes you know what you want, and that you're right. And that's a problem, because there's lots of things you don't know, and if you get what you want you may find that (A.) You didn't really want it, and (B.) that you're not the person that started the journey towards that. That happens a lot to people, especially when they use their language in a manipulative way.”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“Setting the agenda and getting one's way, however, are two very different things.”

“It's the soldiers of the King, my lads
Who've been, my lads, who've seen, my lads
In the fight for England's glory lads
When we've had to show them what we mean.”