Quotes About Desperation

If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart.

You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just thrash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.

She knows she's deceiving herself about that, but she prefers to deceive herself. She desperately needs to believe such pure joy is still possible.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense no thought with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced to spearpoint into the present tense. - Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)

Have they forgotten that I'm in here? They'll have to bring more food, or at least more water, or else I will starve, I will shrivel, my skin will dry out, all yellow like old linen; I will turn into a skeleton, I will be found months, years, centuries from now on, and they will say Who is this, she must have slipped our mind, Well sweep all those bones and rubbish into the corner, but save the buttons, no sense in having them go to waste, there's no help for it now.

Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate

As a species we're doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. But we're doomed without hope, as well, said Jimmy. Only as individuals, said Crake cheerfully.

Vancouver is the suicide capital of the country. You keep going west until you run out. You come to the edge. Then you fall off.

She's a lean vixen: I can see the ribs, the sly trickster's eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinny feet, adept at lies. Why encourage the notion of virtuous poverty? It's only an excuse for zero charity. Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger corrupts absolutely

But by that time Janine was like a puppy that's been kicked too often, by too many people, at random: she'd roll over for anyone, she'd tell anything, just for a moment of approbation. (...) Janine looked down at the floor. Whatever it was, she knew she would not be blamed for it, she was blameless. But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless? So at the same time she felt guilty, and as if she was about to be punished.

I want to protect myself from any further, darker memories of hers, get myself out of here gracefully before something embarrassing happens. She's balanced on the edge of an artificial hilarity that could topple over at any moment into its opposite, into tears and desperation.

Every move I make is sodden with unreality. When no one is around, I bite my fingers. I need to feel physical pain, to attach myself to daily life.

a young woman in desperate financial straits, with no visible relations and no nest egg or trust fund or fallback. People would shake their heads — a shame but what could you do, and at least she had something of marketable value, namely her young ass, and therefore she wouldn't starve to death, and nobody had to feel guilty.

It's going to be all right, I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I'll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that would be of the least use or even interest I'll never know.

people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

T]he mothers who had sold their children felt empty and sad. They felt as if this act, done freely by themselves (no one had forced them, no one had threatened them) had not been performed willingly. They felt cheated as well, as if the price had been too low. Why hadn't they demanded more? And yet, the mothers told themselves, they'd had no choice.

I will suffocate, drugged by elixir of roses.

I can't let him go. I can't. There must be some way to bring him back. Oh, I can't think about this now! I'll go crazy if I do! I'll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? Tara! Home. I'll go home. And I'll think of some way to get him back. After all... tomorrow is another day!

Now for the first time since the barbecue she realized just waht she had brought on herself. The thought of this strange boy whom she hadn't really wanted to marry getting into bed with her, when her heart was breaking with an agony of regret at her hasty action and the anguish of losing Ashley forever, was too much to be borne.

And now in this hour of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible that she could be so completely alone, and frightened, and far from home.

She heard the soft muffled sound of his footsteps dying away down the long hall, and the complete enormity of her actions came over her. She had lost him forever. Now he would hate her and every time he looked at her he would remember how she threw herself at him when he had given her no encouragement at all.

In my desperation, I have finally discovered that the only way that I can begin to fill the gaping hole within me is to be thankful for what's there, and not angry for what's not.

Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself.

Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority of pleasure-seekers really are!