“All I ever wanted was to know what to do.”

Hello.
Song lyrics, Can't Slow Down (1983)

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

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.

Source: The Running Dream

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Variant: All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.
Source: It Chooses You