Love And Wanting Quotes & Sayings

They call it love," said Vernon. "I don't know what they mean by it. What do you mean [by love]?"
"I don't exactly know," said Temple slowly. "I suppose it's wanting to be with a person, and thinking about nothing else. And thinking they're the most beautiful and all that. And going over everything that they've ever said to you, and wanting - Well, I suppose if it's really love you want to marry them. — E. Nesbit

In a more evolved world, one a little more alive to the Greek ideal of love, we would perhaps know to be a bit less clumsy, scared, and aggressive when wanting to point something out, and rather less combative and sensitive when receiving feedback. The concept of education within a relationship would thus lose some of its unnecessarily eerie and negative connotations. We would accept that in responsible hands, both projects - teaching and being taught, calling attention to another's faults, and letting ourselves be critiqued - might — Alain De Botton

He found himself filled with joy, for now his existence had a meaning. He had a future, because he was part of a world that had a future, and instead of wanting to decide for himself and determine that future for everyone else, he knew that he would be glad just to touch some small part of it. To marry and give happiness to his wife. To have a child and give it the same love that his parents gave him. To have a friend and ease his burdedn now and then. To have a skill or a secret and teach it to a student whose life might be changed a little by what he learned. Why had he dreamed of leading armies, whichwould accomplish nothing, when he could do these miraculous small things and change the world? — Orson Scott Card

I know I've broken all the rules of all the games, that all the great players and best love calculators recommend that you play, if you want to make someone like you a lot. But that's okay, because I give up. I've got my coffee sitting in my San Francisco cup, I've got Kona island and a working beating heart that's not cold, hard, or numb - very workable and capable of loving, breaking, mending and repeating. So that's just what I'll do. Because I'm too tired. Too tired uping all nighting wasting my precious timing wishing it was your heart pumping, wanting me - like I used to want you. — Coco J. Ginger

How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything. — Eckhart Tolle

It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged ... and found wanting. — Anthony Hopkins

Sarah Lynn strides out of the stairwell. Lawrence watches her go. The door slushes shut behind her, and he turns to me with a tightened jaw. I want to tell him: No, no, you've got it all wrong. I don't care if you kiss a white girl. I don't care if you love a white girl. I just wish you'd chosen a white girl worthy of your love.
Lawrence's Adam's apple jerks up and down, and I realize that in addition to whatever else he's feeling, he's scared. He's in love with the darling of the school, Sarah Lynn Lancaster, ad he's afriad I'll expose his secret. I give a tiny shake of my head, wanting him to know he has nothing to fear, not from me. — Lauren Myracle

Don't allow yourself to feel guilty about wanting deep and endless love, amazing sex and opportunities that will change your life. Expect these things - work for them and don't ever stop until they're yours. — Jennifer Elisabeth

At the core of love is validation. It is what gives love power.
For when love is given away, validation seeps in and expands in the heart of the recipient, filling up every empty, dark corner. It is a wonderful, light, consuming feeling we long for, and once found, we hope - even expect - it will forever remain. But there are times when that most precious love is revoked, and a hard scab forms over the empty hole. Though this scab is both healing and protective, it is the reason why validation from future love may not seep in so easily, no matter how wanting the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Suffering sucks. Don't do it. Go home and love your wife. Go home and love yourself. Go home
and base your happiness on one thing and one thing only: freedom. Choose freedom, not suffering. Create a life of freedom, not wanting. Have some really good coffee and listen to the red-winged blackbirds in the marsh. Ignore the mosquitoes. — Laura Munson

I was so in love with books from as early as I remember that it seemed a natural step to want to create them. And so I just wanted to be a writer from a very young age. And I think that the lies were just a natural side effect of me wanting to tell stories and write them down. — Marie Rutkoski

Sydney, don't leave Adrian because of me."
"It's more complicated than that," I said automatically.
"It's really not," she said. "From everything I've seen and heard, you're just afraid. You've always controlled every detail of your life. When you couldn't-like with the Alchemists-you found a way to seize back that control."
"There is nothing wrong with wanting control," I snapped.
"Except that we can't always have it, and sometimes that is a good thing. A great thing, even," she added. "And that's how it is with Adrian. No matter how hard you try, you aren't going to be able to control your feelings for him. You can't help loving him, and so you're running away. I'm just an excuse. — Richelle Mead

I couldn't tear my eyes from the window, wanting to drink in as much of St. Louis as I could, knowing somewhere out there, one of those infinitesimally small lights was him. I wondered if he'd look up and see the planes crossing the sky like shooting stars, knowing one of those lights was me. — Leah Raeder

While I slept you stood in the
colorful night market
with pyramids of bright
fruit piled high
Where those who loved you,
rushing back to their intimate stalls,
held out pears that had been
dreamed for you
And would the dream pear not
come gladly
once it knew this was you
wanting to take it in?
The dream pear chose reality,
wanting your mouth as I did -
Honestly, it was happy to be bitten. — Brenda Hillman

Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That's what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product. — Fisher Amelie

Yes. Mind you, sociopaths experience many of the same needs we all do," Hetheridge continued. "They attend school, maintain jobs. I believe they can even love, in the way little children love - a combination of wanting and demanding. But sociopaths have no conscience, no innate sense of responsibility toward others. They cannot believe other people have separate lives beyond the sociopath's own needs and expectations. Sociopaths are incapable of empathy, though the more intelligent ones are frequently able to fake it. And that's the key. — Emma Jameson

Guys get a bad rap for not wanting to talk about their feelings but maybe women are in part to blame for that. One thing that I learned from working with people where English was not their first language was this: just because they don't speak your language doesn't mean that they're dumb. Maybe we just need to talk more slowly, use simpler words and have lots more patience. — Dermot Davis

I love my life and my wife and kids, but I've always been somewhat quasi-suicidal, constantly wanting to push things past the edge. — Stephen King

Love is the state of being; it is not a personal feeling directed to a particular someone. Love is beyond romance and attraction.
Love is when it doesn't matter when you get that person or not because you have met your own self through that person and that self will always be with you....within you.Love is not your loftiest fantasy you always thought will happen to you. Love is not wanting someone at any cost and cursing them if you do not "get" them. Love is who you are - your very essence felt and experienced by all that come into your vicinity — Rashmit Kalra

Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked. — Michelle Tea

I love the fact I grew up wanting a brother and now I have four. — Zayn Malik

I fell in love with acting at a very young age, when I was 9 years old and started doing community theater. As far as wanting to make a profession out of it, I was about 13 or 14. When I first saw Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", when I saw Harrison Ford, I knew I wanted to be in movies. — Guy Wilson

Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else ... Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44) — Geneen Roth

Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be. — Alan Cumming

Every time we open one door, we close another. It's lovely to spend Sunday morning with our new love, cooking breakfast and taking a walk together. But in the midst of our happiness, we may feel nostalgia for our former Sunday morning ritual of uninterrupted time alone at a favorite restaurant reading the newspaper. We need to acknowledge the presence of both excitement and loss, to feel their rhythm as they ebb and flow through a new relationship. If we try to deny our losses, they lead to resentments, a gnawing discomfort, and a desire to withdraw.

Yet we also need to remind our ego that love means letting go of our entrenched rituals, of comparing, of wanting life to stay the same...Entering a relationship and living in the heart of the Beloved means our life will change, our shells will crack open and we will never be the same again. — Charlotte Kasl

Her poetry is written on the ghost of trees, whispered on the lips of lovers.
As a little girl, she would drift in and out of libraries filled with dead poets and their musky scent. She held them in her hands and breathed them in
wanting so much to be part of their world ...
It was on her sixteenth birthday that she first fell in love. With a boy who brought her red roses and white lies. When he broke her heart, she cried for days.
Then hopeful, she sat with a pen in her hand, poised over the blank white sheet, but it refused to draw blood ...
She learned too late that poets are among the damned, cursed to commiserate over their loss, to reach with outstretched hands
hands that will never know the weight of what they seek. — Lang Leav

Now bound by the sudden rush of emotion that reverberates through me as I remain intent on awakening Nadia, I push my fingertips upward over her neck as if pushing a coin from the edge of heaven, waiting to catch where it falls as if I were in all places at once. I then gently attack her pressure points from every side, leaving Nadia completely vulnerable to my wanting her. Nadia now hastens my love as I reveal to her my gentle ways that excite and nourish her every capacity in all mind, body, and soul. I take to her exaggerated lines that press firmly against me with a wet friction that builds between the cold and the heat, tasting and smelling her sweet body that warms my heart to its core. I allow my mind to speak through my gaze as I look into Nadia's rich brunneous eyes where hints of sable shimmer across the reflection that mirrors her heart. — Luccini Shurod

Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of humanactions ... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert ... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff. — Lord Chesterfield

The best way to get rid of the pain is to feel the pain. And when you feel the pain and go beyond it, you'll see there's a very intense love that is wanting to awaken itself. — Deepak Chopra

If you don't want to do without a person is not the same thing of wanting to be with that person.
Maybe it's one of the differences between addiction and love. — Luigina Sgarro

Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobler would, and they want women to think like Aimee Mann, and they expect all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end (just like it did for Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones and Nick Hornby's Rob Fleming), and they don't stop believing because Journey's Steve Perry insists we should never do that. — Chuck Klosterman

You will know those who love you, when you are in need. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm sure my mum was a huge influence on my wanting to be an actress: just seeing her doing it, seeing her love it, caring about it. Invest in something, take it seriously and be so wonderful. — Hattie Morahan

He gazed into eyes the color of a summer morning sky and sighed. It felt as if his soul had just come home. — Grace Willows

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them, each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question-as "Do you love me?" -could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other's knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor's arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved. — Shirley Jackson

It is in the heart and not in the words - not even in the most beautiful ones - but in the heart, in the skeleton bird pushing against your chest, wanting to fly, that we know for certain who and what we love. That is all we have, and all there is. — Mette Jakobsen

Before entering into any kind of intimate relationships, whether friendship, familial re-connection, or romance, the idea of "needing" or "being needed" must be eliminated. It's harmful to me and others. Need is no kind of foundation for anything. Rather, I choose to be wanted. "Want" is a deliberate choice. Wanting is not based in fear or ego (which are one in the same, I believe). Want comes from recognition of someone else's goodness and loving them for it. Being wanted is unconditional. It does not require emotional games be played, it does not require reparations be made or obligations be met. Being wanted is good, in and of itself. — Jennifer DeLucy

He let a vision of April grow and fill the world. ( ... ) He saw April at the spaceport, holding him in the dark shadows of the blockhouse while the sky flamed above them. We'll go out like that soon, soon, Tod. Squeeze me, squeeze me ... Ah, he'd said, who needs a ship?
Another April, part of her in a dim light as she sat writing; her hair, a crescent of light loving her cheek, a band of it on her brow; then she had seen him and turned, rising, smothered his first word with her mouth. Another April wanting to smile, waiting; and April asleep, and once April sobbing because she could not find a special word to tell him what she felt for him ... — Theodore Sturgeon

I'm gonna take a nap, Heaven," he said, wanting away from her to clear his head. He didn't like feeling uncomfortable in his house.
"Haven," she corrected him as he started to walk away.
"I know," he said. "I kinda like Heaven though."
She turned to him, and their eyes met for the first time since he'd walked into the room. "Me, too. — J.M. Darhower

My chest ached, my body speaking a language my head didn't quite understand.
I waited.
But Grace, the only person in the world I wanted to know me, just ran a wanting finger over the cover of one of the new hardcovers and walked out of the store without ever realising I was there, right within reach. — Maggie Stiefvater

You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that - if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is - I wouldn't give twopence for him' - here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers - 'whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do. — George Eliot

And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more ... — Ann Rinaldi

My advice to young people wanting to make music and to be in this industry is to really spend your time making music. Make so much music you have no friends. Make music. Figure out what it is you love, and ... because if you're making cool art, then everything else will fall into line. — Lorde

Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship; it is always imperfect if either of these two are wanting. — Eustace Budgell

Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this thy gift of lobster Newburg. And grant us also, if it be Thy will, control of the Hudson Ohio Railroad.'
'But we ain't wanting control of the Hudson Ohio, Sean softly objected.
'True,' said Gabriel Love, 'but the Almighty doesn't need to know that yet. — Edward Rutherfurd

This topic of judging others could actually be taught in a two-word sermon. When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following: Stop it! It's that simple. We simply have to stop judging others and replace judgmental thoughts and feelings with a heart full of love for God and His children. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

And i can't get you out of my head,
how in the world will i begin
to let you walk right out my life
and blow my heart away? — Toni Braxton

While most of humanity was scrabbling for a piece of bread,a roof over their head and a job that would allow them to live with dignity,Ralf Hart had all of that,and it only made him feel more wretched.If he looked back on what his life had been lately,he had perhaps managed two or three days when he had woken up,looked at the sun-or the rain-and felt glad to see the morning,just happy,without wanting anything,planning anything or asking anything in exchange.Apart from those days,the rest of his existence had been wasted on dreams,both frustrated and realized-a desire to go beyond himself,to go beyond his limitations;he had spent his life trying to prove something,but he didn't know what or to whom. — Paulo Coelho

Some people will not make the decision to give Jesus love back no matter how great his love is. These folks are who I call "grace users". They just take advantage of the Lord's love and kindness. True disciples will love the Lord back. When someone truly opens their heart and falls in love with Jesus, wanting to be his disciple will come naturally to them. Christ's love is compelling. — Sandra M. Michelle

In that moment, I wanted to cut out all my sins from my body and lay them down upon the earth before you. Like pieces of bark they are rough and dead, once clutching onto my very skin, all a part of me. You make me want to strip myself bare and lay myself out to you, I want you to see all my flaws, I want you to know I am not beautiful, yet all the while wanting you to take me anyway. I am composed of things that are dead, I am not a tree, I do not give life, I am just bark, flaws, stitched together with hope for something more. I wish for love, I wish for more. — Joshua Allen

Her twitching muscles felt near enough like wracking sobs. Struggling on that table felt near enough like times she'd clutched her knees and sobbed quietly in the tub. Life and love. When the bad parts crept in, sometimes she wished it would end. Wished there was some quick way out for cowards. She loved her husband, wasn't sure how not to, but sometimes she sat in the tub with the water running dangerously hot and wanted out. Like now, just wanting to die. — Hugh Howey

Tobacco Shop') and compares his thinking to 'an overturned bucket' (in a poem dated 16 August 1934). If Soares thinks that 'Nothing is more oppressive than the affection of others' (Text 348), a Ricardo Reis ode (dated 1 November 1930) maintains that 'The same love by which we're loved/Oppresses us with its wanting. — Fernando Pessoa

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live. — David Whyte

Why does the longing for love have to be so acute, like a desperate thirst? Is it because love is wanting to be saved and we can never really be saved? Maybe love is really born of our fears. Love is the heart's desire for a painkiller; a tearful plea for a great big epidural. Yes that's it: love is the only anesthesia that really works. And so people with broken hearts are really those who are just coming to, and if you've ever seen someone come out of general anesthesia, you know that it looks a lot like the beginnings of a broken heart. — Jonathan Hull

I pity you Juliet. You don't know what love is. You think it's Valentine's Day, and weekends in Italy. You think it's drinking champagne in some expensive restaurant and being bought stupid bloody underwear. But that's just the trimmings. The decoration. They're just gestures. Without trust, and respect, and kindness, they don't mean shit. I thought love was about caring about someone day in and day out, about being there when it's rucking amazing and still wanting to be there when it feels like crap, I thought it was about forever. — Alexandra Potter

All this stuff you heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle ... Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost - and will never lose - a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. — George C. Scott

I was born subject like others to errors and defects,
But never to the error of wanting to understand too much,
Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect..
Never to the defect of demanding of the World
That it be anything that's not the World. — Alberto Caeiro

Years later, after other experiences with dogs, I wondered if their species were shaped and charmed to serve as four-legged guides able to assist in leading humanity back to our first - and lost - home. By the example of their joy and humility, by wanting nothing more than food and play and love, by the deep satisfaction that they take from those humble things, they belie all creeds of power and fame. Although they have the teeth to tear, it is by swish of tail and yearning eyes that they most easily get what they want. — Dean Koontz

I thought I knew what love was, that I understood its depth, its importance, its beauty and the happiness and the heartache it brings." He huffed - a small sound of amusement. "I wasn't even close. When I look at you, I see radiance. I know pure happiness. Everything else pales in comparison. The thought of living a single moment without you tears me apart inside. Just when I think I love you as much as possible, you open your heart to me a little more, and my love expands - grows - wanting to fill every emptiness inside you. — Olivia Cunning

The only funny part about Colonial Dunsboro is maybe it's too authentic, but for all the wrong reasons. This whole crowd of losers and nutcases who hide out here because they can't make it in the real world, in real jobs - isn't this why we left England in the first place? To establish our own alternate reality. Weren't the Pilgrims pretty much the crackpots of their time? For sure, instead of just wanting to believe something different about God's love, the losers I work with want to find salvation through compulsive behaviors. — Chuck Palahniuk

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself. — Karl Rahner

And then, leaning slowly towards him, she did something she realised she'd been wanting to do for such a long time. She kissed him.
For a second he hesitated, before letting himself fall with her, and, pulling her close, he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her to him. Breathing her in. His lips against hers. Tongue against tongue. Eyes closed. Hearts thudding. Deep, long, hungry kisses born out of the lack of any feelings of self-consciousness or embarrassment. Just two people wanting each other. Holding each other. Kissing the life out of each other.
It had been a long time coming. — Alexandra Potter

Friedrich kissed the top of her head. "Yes, before I fell in love with you," he said, sounding quite sheepish. "After that I grew quite stubborn about wanting to woo you rather than to buy your affections." "And — K.M. Shea

You're torn between wanting to be closer and wanting to push me away," he said. "So I vote for closer. I'll always vote for closer. — Martina Boone

She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing, and it was not possible that encouragement from her should be long wanting. — Jane Austen

Love is real, real is love, Love is feeling, feeling love, Love is wanting to be loved. Love is touch, touch is love, Love is reaching, reaching love, Love is asking to be loved. Love is you, You and me, Love is knowing, We can be. Love is free, free is love, Love is living, living love, Love is needing to be loved. — John Lennon

She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words. — Shirley Jackson

Besides, I did love Luke - I did. But he wasn't the only one I wanted, and wanting isn't the same as loving. Just as I knew I loved Luke, I wasn't sure whether I loved Adair. I couldn't rule out that my attraction to him wasn't an advanced case of lust, though that's not to say it was inconsequential. Only a fool would underestimate the power of lust. Kingdoms have been won and lost, men and beasts have battled to the death over it. — Alma Katsu

As he fell asleep he was still thinking of the subject which now occupied his mind all of the time - of life and death.

'Love? What is love?' he mused.

'Love Hinders death. Love is life. Anything at all that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is - everything exists - only because I love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a tiny particle of love, shall return to the universal and eternal source.' These thoughts seemed comforting to him. But they were only thoughts. Something was wanting in them, there was something one-sided and personal, something intellectual. They were not self-evident. And he was prey to the same restlessness and uncertainty. He fell asleep. — Leo Tolstoy

If I lay here
If I just lay here
would you lie with me and just forget the world? — Snow Patrol

I need to learn how to stop destroying myself, stop being hard on myself and be nice to myself. I need to keep telling myself that I need to keep wanting something, something nice, something warm[so] I can make other people happy. I can understand other people's pain because I can love even after all that is left of me is gone because I have that strength. — Daul Kim

Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon. — Alice Hoffman

Unconditional love. That's what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn't he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain? — Alan Lightman

When I was 9, I auditioned for an arts school in Toronto with a few of my friends. The sole reason we auditioned was that we found out you got to miss a couple days of school to do the audition. Without actually wanting to go to arts school, I accidentally got in. My parents encouraged me to try it, and I ended falling in love with performing. — Jake Epstein

As much as I want you and want to be with you and part of you, I can't tear myself away from the realness of my responsibilities. If you force me, physically or mentally, to go with you, as I said earlier, I cannot fight that. I don't have the strength, given my feelings for you. In spite of what I said about not taking the road away from you, I'd go because of my own selfish wanting of you. But please don't make me. Don't make me give this up, my responsibilities. I cannot do that and live with the thought of it. If I did leave now, those thoughts would turn me into something other than the woman you have come to love — Robert James Waller

Because way back before you were even born there was this girl you see. And I fell in love with her. It was something that I wanted-love-not because it was expected of me, but because I found it out my self-that happiness of wanting to be with that other person. — Marianne Wiggins

She needed this. For the comfort, for the love, for all the glorious things she did not deserve and yet could not stop herself from wanting. — Madeline Martin

Dried out and curled up in a ball, me, I am like tea. Waiting to be immersed. Willing to unfold. Wanting to unfurl. Wailing silently to be exposed. Whimpering till that day. It seems I'm wilting and withering away. — Dharlene Marie Fahl

Have I added to their building blocks, shoring them up with strength and their own magnificence? Have I shown them enough color? Did I let them have enough ice cream and leave them alone enough without my anxieties? How can we know which is the right way? We have to go with our inner instincts and the feeling in our bones. But I can contribute to their growing cells, show them some foods that are better than others, walk with them, and encourage their own tastes. I can teach them to love and appreciate food, help them treat their bodies like gold, listen to them wanting more or less. The rest I have to trust. — Tessa Kiros

And more than that, Bodee left me with hope. For love. For wanting someone to touch me again and to lie with me without fear as my first response. Because Bodee slept in his sneakers, because Bodee asked for a kiss instead of just taking it, and because he kept space between us. He danced with two fingers until I asked for three or four ... and his hand on my hip.
I know we're both still broken. Both of us. But Bodee's got the glue to make us whole.
He is love. — Courtney C. Stevens

He was the northern star. I had no choice but to become enveloped in his brightness and let it coax me toward him. Wanting him was an unconscious impulse, like taking my next breath. — R.S. Grey

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret.
It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent
holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting. — Joseph Hansen

Sometimes, people just stop wanting to be with you, plain and simple. It happens. And it's always best to just leave it at that. It's always best to just let it all go. — Marla Miniano

Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn't about getting stuff or attaining something. It's about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can't love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring. — Stasi Eldredge

Emily looked over at Courtney. He was still asleep.
For a long time she had thought that if you loved anyone you had to tell him everything: go to him and confess as in the dream; there could be no secrets. But now in the dark of early morning with the copper bottle cold against her fee she felt that this desire to tell all was simply an evasion of responsibility, a weakness in wanting to push on to the person you love something that is your own responsibility to solve. It would be easier for her to tell Courtney all about Abe, to come to him as he sat at this desk in the chill little workroom and confess, to hand the responsibility for her ambivalence to him, to let him settle the problem of her puny conscience for her.
But I know, she thought, lying there beside him on Madame Pedroti's lumpy bed, that if I love Courtney that is the last thing I must do. If I love Courtney he must never know. — Madeleine L'Engle

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up. — Louise Penny

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

If you want something, my dearest love, the duke had once told her, you will never get it. Want is a timid, abject word. It implies that you know you will be left wanting, that you know you do not deserve the object of your desire but can only hope for a miracle. You must expect that object instead, and it will be yours. There is no such thing as a miracle. — Mary Balogh

It is, as calls to arms go, straightforward. Crystal clear. And if you aren't looking forward to Spurs and Kazan, to Southampton and Bournemouth, if that just doesn't get you going, wanting to be emotional, unashamedly emotional, optimistic, passionate in a way that outsiders love to mock and our own meek minded souls call 'embarrassing' then you know what? There's the door. There is the door, and you can walk through it, and both you and us will be happier for that. Because, for ninety minutes every few days, this fella represents Liverpool, eleven lads wearing Red represent Liverpool and we represent Liverpool. Wherever we are on globe, with an even greater responsibility if we are in the stadium. — Neil Atkinson

For five years I didn't think it was possible to be this happy.
But then he forgot all those promises he made. He forgot why he loved me. He simply stopped loving me.

And this is how he did it:
He stopped talking to me unless I spoke to him.
He stopped holding my hand.
He stopped kissing me good night.
He stopped kissing me good morning.
He stopped kissing me.
He stopped smiling at me.
He stopped laughing.
He stopped bathing and showering with me.
He stopped wanting me.
He started swearing at me.
He started lying to me.
He started cheating on me.
He hurt me.
And then he told me he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce.
Oh, I forgot. He said he was sorry.

I wanted to blow his fucking brains out. — Terry McMillan

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that. — Patricia A. McKillip

God has never promised a life without suffering, but He has promised to comfort us and give us the strength to carry on. He has also promised to work good out of everything that happens to us if we love Him and continue wanting His will in our lives (Rom. 8:28). — Joyce Meyer

Being in love is ... anxious," he said. "Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is ... you're naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all ... I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her — Audrey Niffenegger

Who hasn't sharpened the edge of his soul? When, just as our eyes are opened, we see hate, and just after learning to walk, we are tripped, and just for wanting to love, we are hated, and for no more than touching, we are hurt, which of us hasn't started to arm himself, to make himself sharp, somehow, like a knife, to pay back the hurt? — Pablo Neruda

In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love. — Masashi Kishimoto

It's always times like these when I think of you and I wonder if you ever think of me. — Vanessa Carlton

a lack of love:
between a man and a woman is the announcement that what they might produce would only be a badly organized, unhappy being, wanting in harmony in itself. — Alain De Botton

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary." A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme - so whimsical, sensual, and urgent - that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn't had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco - glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls - was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term "flower children" would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam. — Sheila Weller

She'd stood by that creed. No softness, because the world wasn't soft; lots of laughter, because if you were in on the joke, the joke couldn't be on you; And no wanting what you couldn't take, because the world never gave.
Or so she'd thought. — Connie Brockway

It's just that without wanting to or trying to - and for years I was deliberately trying not to - I held on to love. Or it held on to me. Not active love; not love, the verb form. It was more just there, a small, unshakable thing, leftover, useless, as vestigial as wisdom teeth or a tailbone, but still potent enough so that when I heard his voice on the phone, my heart gave a tiny jump of hope that made me want to slap it. — Marisa De Los Santos