Quotes about want
page 58

“But when Anthony kissed her, she felt as
if she were losing her mind. And when he
kissed her twice, she wasn't even sure if she wanted it back!”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Kiss

“You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian

Books

“The only thing I do know for sure is that if we both want to, we’ll find a way to make it work.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

Way

“Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.”

Frantz Fanon book The Wretched of the Earth

Source: The Wretched of the Earth

People, Understanding

“Sometimes what you want is right in front of you. All you have to do is open your eyes and see it.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

“Having more does not keep you from wanting more. And if you always want more - to be richer, more beautiful, more well known - you are missing the bigger picture, and I can tell you from experience, happiness will never come”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

Happiness, Beauty

“If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.”

Robertson Davies book Fifth Business

Source: Fifth Business

Life

“Don't untie me," she said, "no matter what happens or how much I plead. I'll want to go straight over the edge and drown myself."
"Are you trying to tempt me?"
"Ha-ha.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

World, Dreams

“If you have to ask, you've never been in love. More than that, you've never had your feelings hurt by the one you want to trust and cherish you most of all.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Golden: A Retelling of Rapunzel

Love, Feeling, Hurt

“Based on her experience with men, most assumed that when you talked to them about a problem or dilemma, they were expected to offer an opinion, even when all you wants was for them to listen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Men, Problem

“Then you've made the only choice. But there's a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It's loneliness.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

Penalty, Loneliness

“At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Source: Blood Memory

Drink, Time, Dance

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

Time

“… It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.”

Thomas Harris Hannibal Rising

Source: Hannibal Rising

Home, Help, Childhood

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Fear, Thinking

“You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I willna let ye go”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

“I never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Envy, Personality

“Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Way, Sleep, Change

“arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

World, Way, Personality

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

People, Lie, Stupidity

“I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, eating each day.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Thinking, Sleep

“We don't choose our talents; but we needn't hide them in a napkin because they are not just what we want.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

“This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Heart

“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Feeling

“Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Men, Sense

“Because I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don't want to miss any of them.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“All his life he had wanted to be known by just one person. That’s what love was, he decided. Love was being known.”

Justin Cronin book The City of Mirrors

Source: The City of Mirrors

Love, Life, Personality

“If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Silence, Hurt

“Maybe love is thinking that every time your partner does or says something mundane that you want to start a Mexican wave from here to Uzbekistan in utter delight.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Love, Thinking, Time

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Learning, Time

“i wish means: would it be nice if..
i want means: if i want it enough i will get it.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

“If you want me to treat your ideas with more respect, get some better ideas.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

Idea

“You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: Not Dying: An Autobiographical Interlude

“We can do anything we want as long as we stick to it long enough.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“I’m going to be exposed, aren’t I? (Acheron)
I don’t know. You planning on dropping your pants around me? If so, warn me first. I don’t want to go blind. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“You just don't want a vampire pissed off at you.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead as a Doornail

Source: Dead as a Doornail

“Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do YOU want?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Thinking, Parent

“Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.”

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

“what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated. do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s happy, and to have not a single person recognize it”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Happiness, Personality

“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.
"Oh, sure you know," the photographer said.
"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

“I won’t lie. I want to beat the hell out of any man who’s had you—you’d be smart to keep them the hell away from me—but nothing in your past can change how I feel about you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Lie, Feeling, Hell, Change

“Feeling scared yet? Want to go somewhere safe?" "It won't help, will it? We'd just run into Godzilla or the Vampire from Hell. Trouble just follows you around." "Hey, Trouble. Let's find out what your mysterious Indian wanted us to know.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Feeling, Hell, Help

“If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive. If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred.”

Krishna Dharma (1955) British Hindu scholar and author

Love, Forgiveness

“My mother says men are different from us. She says we want to be in love, but only with the one we want; a man needs to be in love, but he will love the first woman to tie a string to his heart. - Egwene, speaking to Elayne”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Love, Men, Heart

“You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.''

"No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Fools, Time

“I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Wall

Source: The Wall

“What if two people want to be your partner, then what?”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

People

“I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense, Passion, Parting

“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state… Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Life, Men, Personality

“Good night, Gabriel.' [Kaitlyn] said
You jerk
[Gabriel] widened his eyes. 'Don't you want to stay? It's a big bed.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Strange Power

Jerk, Night

“A shell screams over the house. He thinks: I only want to sit here with her for a thousand hours.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Thinking, Housing

“Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Secret

“Oh, Gods."
His eyes shone with want and predatory satisfaction. "The name's William. It's a common mistake.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Bayou Moon

God

“I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Love, Soul, Heart

“I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Past, Forgetting

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”

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

Time, Daughters, Speed

“I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it.”

Sarah Vowell book Unfamiliar Fishes

Source: Unfamiliar Fishes

“And oh I want so much to sing, I tell myself no. But it is so hard to keep from singing.”

Donna Jo Napoli (1948) American children's writer and linguist

Singing

“She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 130

Love, Knowledge

“They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

World, Feeling, Perfection, Night

“But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Happiness, Learning, Loss, Parting

“Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Why I Wake Early

World, Mountain, Understanding

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Seven.
Context: "Lucky we know the forest so well, or we might get lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you can't get lost.
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

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