Quotes About Desire

Sex can damage love but love can't damage sex.

The craving for the thing is rarely met by the satisfaction of getting it. And so we crave more. And the cycle repeats. We are encouraged to want what will only make us want more. We are, in short, encouraged to be addicts.

Want is an interesting word. It means lack.

Magazines are very popular, despite no human ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to them needing to buy something, which they do, and then feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next. It is an eternal and unhappy spiral that goes by the name of capitalism and it is really quite popular.

If we are being sold the idea of cool via a pair of trousers, we subconsciously feel a pressure to obtain and maintain that coolness. And all too often, when we have spent a lot of money on a desired item, we have a sinking feeling. The craving for the thing is rarely met by the satisfaction of getting it. And so we crave more. And the cycle repeats. We are encouraged to want what will only make us want more. We are, in short, encouraged to be addicts.

wanting is also lacking. That is what "want" means.

That's the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything.

Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie the economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren't photoshopped and filtered.

Some humans not only liked violence, but craved it, I realised. Not because they wanted pain, but because they already had pain and wanted to be distracted away from that kind of pain with a lesser kind.

otherwise happiness will drip through us like water through a leaky bucket. The moment we want is the moment we are dissatisfied. The more we want, the more we will drip ourselves away.

We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. —DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Magazines are very popular, despite no human's ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to a feeling of needing to buy something, which the humans then do, and then feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next. It is an eternal and unhappy spiral that goes by the name of capitalism, and it is really quite popular.

Oh, and let's not forget the Things They Do to Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semiautobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old, and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.

my mind switches to what it would be like to be with her, to lose my way with her, to whisper longings into her ear, to devour and be devoured. To wake up in the same bed and talk and laugh and be in comfortable silence with her. To give her breakfast. Toast. Blackcurrant jam. Pink grapefruit juice. Maybe some watermelon. Sliced. On a plate. She would smile, and I see it in my mind, the smile, and I would dare to feel happy with another human being.

Nora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor.

The world is what we recognize in our own will. Humans are ruled by their basic desires and lead to suffering and pain, because our desires make us crave things from the world but the world is nothing but representation. Because those same cravings shape what we see. We end up feeding from ourselves, until we go mad.

To want is to lack. That is what it means.

I sometimes want to stop time. I sometimes want, in a happy moment, for a church bell never to ring again. I want not to ever have to go to the market again. I want for the starlings to stop flying in the sky... But we are all at the mercy of time. We are all the strings, aren't we?

The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

She had shrunk for him, but he still hadn't found the space he needed.

we are encouraged to desire this state of affairs. 'Embrace' the future and 'let go' of the past. The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living.

I have learned that however strong the craving gets the guilt afterwards will be stronger.

She had to try harder. She had to want the life she always thought she didn't. Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives. She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability.