Looking Desperate Quotes & Sayings

We are all searching for love, some at the bottom of a bottle, some at the casino, some in the eyes of a new lover. The more we search outside ourselves, we more desperate we become. We suffer not because love's unavailable, but because we are not looking in the right place. — Vironika Tugaleva

When the earliest Vikings started moving into the northern oceans, there's one story about finding this huge fuckin opening at the top of the world, this deep whirlpool that'd take you down and in, like a black hole, no way to escape. These days you look at the surface Web, all that yakking, all the goods for sale, the spammers and spielers and idle fingers, all in the same desperate scramble they like to call an economy. Meantime, down here, sooner or later someplace deep, there has to be a horizon between coded and codeless. An abyss."
"That's what you're looking for?"
"Some of us are." Avatars do not do wistful, but Maxine catches something. "Others are trying to avoid it. Depends what you're into. — Thomas Pynchon

You turn into this desperate dude looking for a shred of attention when you just had so much. It's like, "I'm just lonely and all I really want is a hug, but I gotta capture that in something real gross." You start to understand why circus clowns are alcoholics. — Babatunde Adebimpe

What are you doing here?" Dastien stomped over to me, his eyes a bright shade of amber. He was pissed and looking like a crazy-man. "Reading." What was his problem? I lifted my mug and took a sip while he stared. He gave a desperate laugh and sank into the seat across from me. "I haven't felt this out of control in years." He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. "No. I don't think I was ever this inept." I should've felt bad for him, but I didn't. It reassured me. If — Aileen Erin

Ever since the night of his breakup with Paul - ever since he got stupidly drunk and kissed his best friend - Ryan had been looking at him a little oddly. James didn't think Ryan suspected the truth, but Ryan had been extra attentive, as if he was afraid Jamie was depressed. The worst thing was, James could remember only vaguely the kiss they shared, or rather, the kisses they shared, because apparently when he was drunk, he had no shame and wasn't above using Ryan's pity and kindness. The memory alone made him cringe. He'd never thought he could be so desperate and pathetic, but apparently, he was.

It wasn't the only thing that worried him. He could vaguely remember telling Ryan something before passing out, but no matter how hard he strained his memory, it remained blank. What if he'd said something incriminating? — Alessandra Hazard

Searching for the self when I was entirely alone was hazardous. What if I found not so much a great emptiness as a space full of unpleasant contents, a compound of long-hidden truths, closeted, buried, forgotten. When I went looking, I was playing a desperate game of hide-and-seek, fearful of what I might find, most afraid that I would find nothing. — Doris Grumbach

This sense of being out of time has driven thousands of people from their homes into moving-picture theaters where new universes appear before them, with emphasis on man and his major problem: a thing called, conveniently, love. The Sunday midnight shows do a thriving business, and the people go back to their homes, sick with the sickness of frustration; it is this that makes the city so interesting at night: the people emerging from the theaters, smoking cigarettes and looking desperate, wanting much, the precision, the glory, all the loveliness of life: wanting what is finest and getting nothing. It is saddening to see them, but there is mockery in the heart: one walks among them, laughing at oneself and at them, their midnight staring. — William, Saroyan

Trina stared into her open kitchen cabinets. She was two and a half days into her pre-date-night ritual fast, and she was about to crack. Technically, she wasn't going out on a date Saturday night, but Juliet was determined to have a man in her bed by the end of the evening. To be honest, Trina wasn't really looking forward to tomorrow night's manhunt. Sure, she was desperate for some hot monkey sex, but the thought of a one-night-stand was quickly losing its appeal. She wanted more than just plain, old sex. She wanted romance
preferably with someone for whom she didn't have to fast for three days to attract. — Lucie Simone

I dreamed of setting it up out here in front of where I am sitting now, on the tripod that I would have ordered too, and starting, taking my time, to focus on a curling line of water, a piece of the world indifferent to the fact that there is language, that there are names to describe things, and grammar and verbs. My eye, solitary, filled with its own history, is desperate to evade, erase, forget; it is watching now, watching fiercely, like a scientist looking for a cure, deciding for some days to forget about words, to know at last that the words for colours, the blue-grey-green of the sea, the whiteness of the waves, will not work against thefullness of watching the rich chaos they yield and carry. — Colm Toibin

But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuing us, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, and the true professionals begin to tire of that old catchphrase "What you looking at?" begin to tire of that old catchphrase "What you looking at?" and move into more exotic territory. Take Mad Mary. Oh, the principle's still the same, it's still all about eye contact and the danger of making it, but now she's making eye contact from a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred yards away, and if she catches you doing the same she roars down the street, dreads and feathers and cape afloat, Hoodoo stick in hand, until she gets to where you are, spits on you, and begins. — Zadie Smith

In any age, there is no shortage of people willing to embark on a hazardous adventure. Columbus and Magellan filled eight ships between them for voyages into the void. One hundred and fifty years ago, the possibilities offered by missionary service were limitless and first-rate. Later, Scott and Shackleton turned away droves after filling their crews for their desperate Antarctic voyages. In 1959 ... sailor H.W. Tilman, looking for a crew for a voyage in an old wooden yacht to the Southern Ocean, ran this ad in the London Times: "Hand [man] wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure." Tilman received more replies than he could investigate, one from as far away as Saigon. — Peter Nichols

If one is desperate for love, I suggest looking at one's friends and family and see if love is all around. If not, get a new set of friends, a new family. — Jasmine Guy

His hands tightened on her shoulders as the truth washed over him. My God, she really had told him yes.
He opened his mouth to ask if she was certain then didn't. If he did, she might change her mind, and he had no intention of giving her that opportunity. Underneath his hands, her shoulders quivered. She raised her gaze to him again, and his heart plunged into the depths. She had her lower lip trapped between her teeth, and her eyes were tormented pools of blue green. His heart broke just looking at her.
She was not in love with him. He knew that. Her acceptance of him had nothing to do with the sort of desperate longing he had for her. Not that he hadn't known that the first time he proposed to her, but to have her say yes out of despair added an edge of pain to his euphoria. He knew she wasn't indifferent to him, after all, and for the moment, that sufficed to keep the hurt at arm's
length. — Carolyn Jewel

How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the streets, and an hour from now they would all be still. The waiting mid-town office buildings would swallow them up and contain them, so that to stand in one tower looking out across the canyon to another would be to inspect a great silent insectarium displaying hundreds of tiny pink men in white shirts, forever shifting papers and frowning into telephones, acting out their passionate little dumb show under the supreme indifference of the rolling spring clouds. — Richard Yates

For all his clever ideas, Maven has nothing to say to this. He just stares, his breath coming in tiny, scared puffs. I know the look on his face; I wear it every time I'm forced to say good-bye to someone.
"It's too bad we didn't stay longer," I murmur, looking out at the river. "I would have liked to die close to home."
Another breeze sends a curtain of my hair across my face but Maven brushes it away and pulls me close with startling ferocity.
Oh.
His kiss is not at all like his brother's. Maven is more desperate, surprising himself as much as me. He knows I'm sinking fast, a stone dropping through the river. And he wants to drown with me.
"I will fix this," he murmurs against my lips. I have never seen his eyes so bright and sharp. "I won't let them hurt you. You have my word. — Victoria Aveyard

Looking down she arched her back, giving him more. His tanned complexion against her milky, slightly freckled skin was visually stark and sexually exciting. She watched as his mouth claimed her other nipple, stroking it with his tongue, and her vision blurred as he rhythmically rocked his erection against her sex.
Hot, damp, desperate, she braced herself with her hands on his knees behind her and met him thrust for thrust, pushing hard. Breathing as heavy as he was, she trembled with the flash fire of passion overtaking them both. — Jennifer St. Giles

I was jostled, and I pushed back harder, desperate to escape the tumult, when a hand snatched at mine. It was Philip's, and looking over my shoulder I saw his lips move - he said something - but I couldn't hear what. Everything was too loud and too whirling and too hot. I tripped over dancing feet, and then an arm was around my waist, and Philip pulled me out of the dance, where his mother waited with a worried expression. I sat in a chair by a window. Philip leaned over me, looking very worried, and Lady Caroline was there, too, fanning me and asking what had happened. — Julianne Donaldson

As I was saying. He could never use you. You own him. You should've seen the way he was looking at you while you were out."
I smiled a little. "How?"
"Like you're the ocean and he's desperate to drown. — Michelle Hodkin

Still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, and losses; we will have gray till the cows come home, and there will be no more cows
they'll all just rot, drown, or simply wash away. We will have rain until the very hills dissolve. And when the dirty cotton swaddling of fog finally falls away, we will all be desperate for vital signs. — Robert Michael Pyle

If you will count, count the stars, dear one. How many stars in the sky, looking down on us as we lie in each other's arms and taste joy? How many gleaming fish in the lake where I splash our son in the water and hear his streaks of glee ring out in the clear air? A fine little salmon you made, that night in the rain. How many times does the heart beat, how fast does the blood run when at last we touch, and touch again, and breathe the same desperate, longing breath? Count those things, for they are the stuff of life and hope. — Juliet Marillier

When posing for a photograph, spinsters should avoid looking desperate or deprived. A serene smile will show that your circumstances are by choice and not for lack of beauty or character. -Miss Gertrude Hasslebrink, 1878 — Margaret Brownley

Besides, I'm not looking to get saved. I'm only going with her because it's what you do when you're in a relationship. You know? You slide into the third pew from the front and sit there thinking about how desperate all these people are to feel like something loves them. They'll believe all kinds of hocus-pocus. But your girlfriend likes it, and you like her, so you do it. It's called compromise. The only way you're going to get something to last in this world is to work at it. — Tim Tharp

I'm desperate for peace. I think you might be the only chance I have at that." I smiled. "The center of your storm?" He exhaled, looking relieved. "Yes. — Kiera Cass

I turned back looking far away not making contact with anyone and I paced to my room with tears in my eyes, solitude in my heart and nuisance in my mind. I locked my door, rested in bed and slept while still desperate. — Shaikh Ashraf

The last time I checked, relevance wasn't a fruit of the Spirit. For those who place such a premium on looking like, acting like, and sounding like the world, it should come as no surprise that they have no influence on the world. They often confuse acceptance by the world around them with actual Kingdom results in impacting their world. It is as though there is a deep insecurity at the root, and they are desperate to prove that you can be "Christian and cool. — Robert Stearns

I know I suck," I whispered, looking her in the eye, feeling desperate. "I know I don't deserve you. Just don't leave me. Please? I'll be better, okay? Just don't leave me. — Kieran Scott

Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine cannonry of their own farting. Only in sleep is silence tolerated, and even there, most dreams have soundtracks. Since meditation is a deliberate descent into deep internal hush, a mute stare into the ultimate looking glass, it is regarded with suspicion by the nattering masses; with hostility by buisness interests (people sitting in silent serenity are seldom consuming goods); and with spite by a clergy whose windy authority it is seen to undermine and whose bombastic livelihood it is perceived to threaten. — Tom Robbins

Take heart now in one true thing: You will gain traction. You will grow upwards even when you think you've been slammed back down into that same dark hole. It will start looking like a different hole, one that might still have you
curled up and crying, but that crying will be more transformative than only desperate screams of despair. Your pain can be turned to good account. You're not alone. You've got
this handbook. Keep us with you. — Deborah Pardes

His head moved down, his mouth taking hers in a kiss that held the passion of a thousand years as his body molded against her trembling frame. His lips were hard and hungry as he fought against her resistance, and he pulled his head away for a moment, looking down into her desperate eyes with no pity at all. "Open your mouth, Rachel," he said.
And closing her eyes, she did, sliding her helpless arms around his body, pulling him closer against her yearning form. Just once, she told herself. Just this once. And she gave herself up to the searching demand of his kiss. — Anne Stuart

New York is just New York. It's a hard city, it's a hard city to live in. It's a desperate city. It's filled with scam artists and people who are always looking for a way in and a way out and the majority of people have to really negotiate their way through that jungle to get to the other side; the other side being a place of tranquility and peace and home and safety. — Scott Cohen

She dropped to the stool before the little looking glass, rested her head on her hands and stared at herself. "He's in love with me," she said. "He's mad for me. I spend all my time bringing him close and holding him off. When he dances with me I can feel his hardness like a codpiece. He's desperate to have me. — Philippa Gregory

She was drained from the shock and fear of looking at the emotional wreckage of real humans, desperate people with little hope and looking to her for help. — John Grisham

But you're looking at this all wrong, Julius. Assassination attempts aren't a threat. They're a compliment. They're the final strike, the last desperate move when every other plot has failed." Ian winked at him. "When they try to kill you, that's when you know you're winning." Julius — Rachel Aaron

Walter from Microsoft catches my eye. Here's a young guy with perfect teeth and clear skin and the kind of job you bother to write the alumni magazine about getting. You know he was too young to fight in any wars, and if his parents weren't divorced, his father was never home, and here he's looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter's thinking about a meatless, pain-free potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth's desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but probably he's not. — Chuck Palahniuk

Looking at those photographs, I remembered how my parents had never said "I love you" to each other. How they had said only "I miss you." At the time, I hadn't been able to figure out what this meant. But now it seemed clear: this was how they defined their love - by how deeply they missed each other when they were together. They felt the loss before it happened, and their love was defined by that loss. They hungered even as they ate, thirsted even as they drank. My mother once told me to live my life as if I were already dead. "Live each day as if you know it's gonna be gone tomorrow," she had said. That was how my parents loved each other, with a desperate, melancholy love, a fierce nostalgia for the present. — Danzy Senna

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate. — Julia Gillard

Retirement is looking more likely as time goes on. I want to spend every second stuck to Jesse so I can slap down these brazen, desperate tarts. I'm mentally trampling again. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Bombs were generally the tools of cowards or the desperate, those who either had no stomach for looking their opponents in the eyes or those who were so outclassed that honor had become a dangerous and entirely unaffordable affectation. — Evan Currie

Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. So I've stopped quarrelling with the world. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house ... and for the first time ... for a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where i was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of life ... and I just sat quiet and alone all day, looking at the tops of trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. — Tom Stoppard

They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that they'd got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didn't understand at all; she couldn't possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs. — Philip Pullman

It is when we are incubating particularly awkward but potentially vital ideas that we tend to feel most desperate to avoid looking inside.
... we will have nothing substantial to offer anyone else so long as we have not first mastered the art of being patient midwives to our own thoughts.
We need long train journeys on which we have no wireless signal and nothing to read, where our carriage is mostly empty, where the views are expansive and where the only sounds are those made by the wheels as they click against the rails in rhythmical succession. — Alain De Botton

What if you lived your entire life completely without urgency? You went to classes, you ate your meals, on Saturday nights a boy you didn't love took you to the movies; now and then you actually had a conversation with someone. The rest of the time -the hours that weren't accounted for-you spent waiting for something to happen to you; when you were particularly desperate, you went out looking for it. — Joyce Johnson

So I got desperate. I was really panicking. Then I got this idea. I figured if I looked at people hitching rides, I might find somebody. One of them might turn out to be the right type of person, and willing to help me. I tried to choose pretty carefully. I only stopped for rough-looking men. — Lee Child