Quotes About Desire

I wanted books like a vampire wants blood.

I think it's just people. They always hope there may be something better.

The multitude," Cavendish says, "is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down—for the novelty of the thing.

Give me a book," she said. "A book of sermons, anything." "What do you want a book for?" "I want words. I've got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.

It's all right for you, you and Danton. I have to go and stutter for two hours at the Jacobins and probably be knocked down again by maddened violin makers and trampled by all sorts of tradesmen. Whilst Danton spends his evenings feeling up his new girlfriend and you lie around here in a nice fever, not too high. If you're an instrument of destiny, and anyone would do instead, why don't you take a holiday?

The multitude is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down - for the novelty of the thing.

I felt a wish to be fictionalized.

But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

But what do they get by the change? One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who bites nearer the bone. Out goes the man grown fat with honor, and in comes a hungry and a lean man.

You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.

Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.

We are vain and ambitious all the same, and we never do live quiet, because we rise in the morning and we feel the blood coursing in our veins and we think, by the Holy Trinity, whose head can I stamp on today? What worlds are at hand, for me to conquer? Or at the least we think, if God made me a crewman on his ship of fools, how can I murder the drunken captain, and steer it to port and not be wrecked?

Be reasonable, my lord. Once you.ve done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes. And your father has other work in mind for you.

If I want a woman, best to rent one by the hour.

It would have been quite in order to slap his face, but what a cliché, she thought, and besides she was off balance. She had always wanted to do it to someone, but would have preferred someone more robust; so, between one thing and another, the moment passed.

Men will never understand it till they stop confusing love with sex, which will be never. (pp54)

When they are alone, she lets him unlace her bodice.' 'At least he doesn't call you to do it.' 'He pulls down her shift and kisses her breasts.' 'Good man if he can find them.

Every possession is a loss

But we yearn for our origins; we yearn for an innocent terrain.

Once Henry says, 'This is my wish,' it becomes so dear and familiar a wish that he thinks he has always had it. He names his need, and he wants it supplied.

I could have told him what I wanted, and threatened him. But I encouraged him; I did it so that he would be complicit.

Gems and jewels and sparkly things. Perfumes and powders and rouges and ribbons. Waltzes, polkas and polonaises. And princes for partners, And most of all, they liked satin dancing shoes.

O, give me burning blueand brittle burnt sea-weedabove the tide-line,as I stand, still unsatisfied,under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.

I tasted, sensed, wanted beauty.