Quotes about want
page 55

“Don't you want me to kiss you goodbye, sweetie?"
"Kiss a cow farm boy”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“Anyway that other thing we almost did in Paris-that's probably off the table for a while. Unless you want that whole baby-I'm-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Kiss, Baby

“No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

Ishmael Reed book Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Source: Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Men

“It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

God

“I like the idea of being whoever I want to be.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

Variant: I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be.

Idea

“Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Time

“There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Parting

“Because not wanting the prize the gods have arranged for you - that just might offend the hell right out of them.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

God, Hell

“We… sin not because we want what is evil, but because we want what isn't good enough.”

Scott Hahn (1957) American theologian

Source: Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession

Evil

“I can’t let you go now. I want to go places with you; obscure little places, just to be able to say: here I came with her.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man Called Noon

Law

“Did you strangle the wolf alpha?" Not that she didn't deserve it.
Curran grimaced. "Of course not. I needed information. After I put her face in my mouth, we agreed that it was in her best interests to tell me what I wanted to know.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Wolf

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Way

“He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.”

Catherine Fisher book Sapphique

Source: Sapphique

Star

“If this is love, no thanks. I don’t want any part of it. When I’m older, I’m just going to do my own thing. If I like a boy, fine, I’ll date him, but I’m not going to sit at home and cry over him. I cry over important things.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, Home, Boy, Parting

“You can't make people listen to you. People only hear what they want to hear.”

Kieran Scott (1974) American writer

People

“I'd sell my soul to have you. In my whole life, you'll always be what I wanted most."

~ Hardy Cates”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life, Soul

“When you're in a competitive environment, always give out the impression that you don't care. It makes people want you more. If you act desperate, it's over. I think a passive attitude is helpful. It comes naturally because I'm lazy.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

People, Nature, Thinking, Help

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Way, Understanding

“It's funny how a flame can only burn your hand if you move too slow, you can tease it all you want and it never gets you, if your quick enough.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“I want to believe that memories, even sad and painful ones, should not be forgotten forever.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Pain, Sadness, Memory

“I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Nothing Was the Same

“Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life, Country

“If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.”

Gary D. Schmidt book The Wednesday Wars

Source: The Wednesday Wars

Question

“the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

“When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Soul, Suffering, Season

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: Darkness, Be My Friend

World, Girl, Hell, Parent

“This is a giant block of whatever is most difficult for you to carry & trust me on this, you'll carry it more times than you can count until you decide that's exactly what you want to do most & then it won't weigh a thing anymore”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Time

“I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.”

Milan Kundera The Joke

Source: The Joke

Falseness

“Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Jerk, Appearance

“Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Very Good, Jeeves!

Hell, Tea

“Facts are simple and facts are straight.
Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view.
Facts don't do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Facts are living turned inside out.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Truth

“I was still searching for someone to blame for my suffering. I really wanted someone to transfer my hate to, so that I could stop hating myself.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Source: The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

Hate, Search, Suffering

“If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

God, World, Heart

“Should I just bite you, and end it all?", he whispered. "I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit and one I want to be rid of.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead as a Doornail

Source: Dead as a Doornail

Thinking

“I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling, Hurt, Cry

“He was the kind of man everyone would fall in love with, even if they didn't want to.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love

“And eternity is a long time. So if you have to spend it with someone I could see wanting to spend it with someone impossible… but interesting….”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Time

“Outside the windows the day was bright: golden sunshine, blue sky, pleasant wind… I wanted to punch the happy day in the face, grab it by the hair, and beat it until it told me what the hell it was so happy about.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Happiness, Hell

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Study, Past

“In love we find out who we want to be, in war we find out who we are.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, War

“… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

World, Music, Thinking, Painting

“Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Love, Disease, Suffering

“I want to sympathize, I do, but the love triangle is just too delicious. The determined rock star and the possessive billionaire. Rawr.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Love, Star

“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Knowledge

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”

Tracy Chevalier book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Painting

“Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Hope

“It happens that I want you, and so I just haven’t room for any other desires.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Life

“I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Lie, Feeling, Communication

“Redemption, transformation--God how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn't everyone?”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

God

“You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things.
                 You wanted to be in love
                             and he happened to get in the way.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Love, Way, Thinking

“I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I stepped forward. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to keep his focus on me and not Annabeth. I think it’s polite for a guy to protect his girlfriend from instant incineration.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

Guy, Fashion, Thinking

“My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Home

“You have a dark heart in you, Valentine’s daughter,” he said. “You just won’t admit it. And if you want Jace, you had better accept it. Because he belongs to me now.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Heart, Daughters

“But everything had changed, and I was becoming more and more of who I really was, and less of this person I had thought I wanted to be.”

Perry Moore (1971–2011) Executive producer of the Narnia films and author of award-winning LGBTQ young adult novel Hero

Change, Personality

“Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way”

Jim Butcher book Academ's Fury

Source: Academ's Fury

Way, Learning, Heart

“Definitely not—you optimists just can't understand that a depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Understanding, Personality

“It's always the people who don't want things who get them.”

Candace Bushnell book One Fifth Avenue

Source: One Fifth Avenue

People

“I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

People, Heart

“Don't roll your eyes. It punctures my dramatic moment. I want my dramatic moment unpunctured.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“If God wanted us to bend over he would put diamonds on the floor.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

„I'm Jewish. I don't work out.."

As quoted in Dick Enberg's Humorous Quotes for All Occasions (2000), p. 101
Variant: I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.

God

“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Love, World

“Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

Feeling, Sleep, Time

“I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Suffering, Cry

“Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Beauty, Game

“Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can means lots of different things. It can mean 'I want to do sex with you' and it can also mean 'I think what you just said was very stupid.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: El curioso incidente del perro a medianoche

Stupidity, Sex, Thinking

“I want you to be everything that's you, deep at the center of your being.”
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Life

“There is a big confusion in this country over what we want verses what we need… you need food. You want a chocolate sundae.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Food, Country

“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

November, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Truth

“He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Part 1, Ch. 8
Source: The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

World, Way, Winter

“She wanted out of that decorating scheme.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.”

Philip Pullman book Clockwork

Source: Clockwork

Failure, Despair

“Oh- and grab the plastic bag over by my suitcase."
I slug down the last of the coffee and get up. The bag contains panty hose. I put them on her desk.
"They're for you."
"You want me to look homeless, desperate, but also kind of fabulous?”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

Coffee

“Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. ~Garrison Keillor”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Beauty, Thinking

“The problem with telling people that they can do anything they want to do is that it is objectively, factually inaccurate. Otherwise the whole world would just be ballet dancers and pop stars.”

David Nicholls book Us

Source: Us

People, World, Star, Problem

“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Love

“If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

Waiting

“Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Life, God, Painting

“And if all that is meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find And of the shame of never finding it.”

T.S. Eliot The Cocktail Party

Source: The Cocktail Party

“You might want to put some clothes on' suggested Jace 'I'm all for the bra and panties look, but you don't want the Silent Brothers to die of excitement”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Clothes

“What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness of
normality that is just a myth.”

Anne Rice Exit to Eden

Source: Exit to Eden

Way, Cry

“What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,’ and, ‘What a man is is an arrow into the future and a what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Future

“Sometimes you have to admit that a relationship can't be fixed. That no matter how much you want to, you can't trust some people.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

People

“I didn’t and don’t want to be a ‘feminine’ version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Part 9, Chapter 4 (p. 206)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
Context: Remember: I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.
What future is there for a female child who aspires to being Humphrey Bogart?

“I've always wanted to be psychoanalyzed in a den of iniquity.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Seduction