Quotes About Desire

You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.

They longed for someone to tell them, once and for all, the meaning of happiness, and then to bind them to it with a chain. What are we doing now, if not this very thing?

What is it that people beg for, dream about, torment themselves for, from the time they leave swaddling clothes? They want someone to tell them, once and for all, what happiness is—and then to bind them to that happiness with a chain.

I ask you: what did people—from their very infancy—pray for, dream about, long for? They longed for some one to tell them, once and for all, the meaning of happiness, and then to bind them to it with a chain.

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.

What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself — if I want the impossible...

A person should want to live, if only out of curiosity.

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.

The word immune (from the Latin immunis, in- + munia, services, obligations) is among my favorites in the English language, the possession of immunity—to illnesses, to follies, to love and loneliness and troubling thoughts and unalleviated pains—a trait that I have desired for my characters and myself, knowing all the while the futility of such a wish. Only the lifeless can be immune to life.

Wishing only wounds the heart.

You cannot cut an apple with an apple. I have interrupted that living to write: the story of a faux-prodigy, which is the real story of Fabienne and Agnes, as real as on that day when we were in th graveyard, wanting, and unable, to kill each other; wanting, and unable, to save each other.

All the girls, other than me, wanted the same things: to own a pair of stockings so their legs would not look bare and childish in their humiliating ankle socks; to have the best notebooks to record song lyrics, those sickeningly sweet words of dreams and loves and hearts; to be praised by the teachers, but more importantly, to be admired and envied by one another; to catch the attention of the right boys.

what is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Let me tell you—history is, unlike what they say on the loudspeakers, not driven by revolutionary force but by people's desire to climb up onto someone else's neck and shit and pee as he or she wants. Enough bad things are done by men already, but if you add women to the equation, one might as well wish not to bring a baby into this world.

I had only wanted to stay invisible, but there as elsewhere invisibility is a luxury.

I wished, too, that life could be reset, but reset from when? From each point I could go to an earlier point: warning signs neglected, mistakes aggregated, but it was useless to do so, as I often ended up with the violent wish that I had never been born.

Life is most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

Don't look at me like that! (spade) You're making me all…excited! (heart)

If a man wanted to put the entire universe in his breast, he couldn't do it with his chest stuck out.

The flesh and blood and passions clouded her eyes with sadness and fear. She had started to run away, but after twenty paces, her love caught and held her.

He had no desire to be anybody's idol. Still, they were here to express their goodwill. There was no way to stop them. Some, he felt, understood him. For their good wishes he was grateful.

Every virtuous woman desires a husband to whom she can look for guidance and protection through this world. God has placed this desire in woman's nature. It should be respected by the stronger sex. Any man who takes advantage of this, and humbles a daughter of Eve to rob her of her virtue, and cast her off dishonored and defiled, is her destroyer, and is responsible to God for the deed.

Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes without one sigh. Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon, Here pinions all his wishes.

Excellent creature! How my soul pants for thee!

I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.