Quotes About Desire

I blinked at her. My shades were down and the hall was dark and to me, half-drugged and reeling, she seemed not at all her bright unattainable self but rather a hazy and ineffably tender apparition, all slender wrists and shadows and disordered hair, the Camilla who resided, dim and lovely, in the gloomy boudoir of my dreams.

There's no 'rational grounds' for anything I care about.

It was the most important night of my life,' he said calmly. 'It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most.' 'Which is?' 'To live without thinking.

Me she was watching for: me. And the heart-shock of believing, for only a moment, that you might just have what could never be yours.

The problem (as I'd learned, repeatedly) was that thirty-six hours in, with your body in full revolt, and the remainder of your un-opiated life stretching out bleakly ahead of you like a prison corridor, you needed some fairly compelling reason to keep moving forward into darkness, rather than falling straight back into the gorgeous feather mattress you'd so foolishly abandoned.

I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back. But I wouldn't say that. It was rosepetals I wanted to throw, not a poison dart.

A moi, L'historie d'une de mes folies.

With a beautiful girl I could have consoled myself that she was out of my league; that I was so haunted and stirred even by her plainness suggested—ominously—a love more binding than physical affection, some tar-pit of the soul where I might flop around and malinger for years.

But I didn't. And, in truth, it was maybe better that I didn't- I say that now, though it was something I regretted bitterly for a while. More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street- which was, of course, I love you.

I loved her every minute of every day, heart and mind and soul and all of it, and it was getting late and I wanted the place never to close, never.

I felt like a lifetime had come and gone since my night with Pippa and I thought how happy I'd been, rushing to meet her in the sharp-edged winter darkness, my elation at spotting her under a streetlamp out in front of Film Forum and how I'd stood on the corner to savor it - the joy of watching her watch for me. Her expectant watching-the-crowd face. Me she was watching for: me. And the heart-shock of believing, for only a moment, that you might just have what could never be yours.

Mine, mine. Fear, idolatry, hoarding. The delight and terror of the fetishist.

As for Charles – well, basically, he likes girls. If he's drunk, I'll do. But – just when I've managed to harden my heart, he'll turn around and be so sweet. I always fall for it. I don't know why.

She raised up on tiptoe and gave me a cool, soft kiss that tasted of Popsicles. Oh you, I though, my heart beating fast and shallow.

We drank our tea. The lamplight was warm and the apartment still and snug. At home in bed, in my private abyss of longing, the scenes i dreamed of always began like this: drowsy drunken hour, the two of us alone, scenarios in which invariably she would brush against me as if by chance, or lean coveniently close, cheek touching mine, to point out a passage in a book, opportunities that i would seize, gently but manfully, as exordium to more violent pleasures.

But those sparkling blue shallows- so enticing at first glance- had not yet graded off into depths, so that sometimes I got the disconcerting sensation of wading around in knee-high waters hoping to step into a drop-off, a place deep enough to swim.

How was it possible to miss someone as much as I missed my mother? I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater.

It's a big shift. I don't know quite how to explain it. Between wanting and not wanting, caring and not caring. Of course it's a lot more than that too. Shock and aura. Things are stronger and brighter and I feel on the edge of something inexpressible.

Death is the mother of beauty. And what is beauty? Terror. Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming. And if beauty is terror, then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it? To live. To live forever.

I was jarred - a little spooked as well - at so blatant a reference to something referred to, by mutual agreement, almost exclusively with codes, catchwords, a hundred different euphemisms. It was the most important night of my life, he said calmly. It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most. Which is? To live without thinking.

And as terrible as this is, I get it. We can't choose what we want and don't want and that's the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it's going to kill us. We can't escape who we are.

great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

And what is beauty? Terror. And if beauty is terror, then what is desire? To live. To live forever.

Un grande dolore, che comincio a comprendere solo adesso: il cuore non si sceglie. Non possiamo obbligarci a desiderare ciò che è bene per noi o per gli altri. Non siamo noi a determinare il tipo di persone che siamo.