Quotes & Sayings About Wanting To Do Something

When you find yourself wanting a better moment -wanting something else in the future- it can be helpful to ask: What will that give me? We think we will finally be happy when that moment arrives. What we discover when we do get what we want is that even that wonderful moment disappears. Life keeps moving on, bringing us a mixture of what we like and don't like. Why not like- love - it all because it won't be here for long, it will never be this way again, and it's all you've got. — Gina Lake

For a long while the past drops away from you easily and it would seem automatically, properly. Its scenes don't vanish so much as become irrelevant. And then there's a switchback, what's been all over and done with sprouting up fresh, wanting attention, even wanting you to do something about it, though it's plain there is not on this earth a thing to be done. — Alice Munro

I will never stop questioning. I will never stop wanting more and discovering other things and wanting to do other things. That will always be a part of me, and it's something I've come to terms with. — David Hallberg

Before I entered the service, all I did was take orders. Next thing I knew, I was giving them.
Peacetime was one thing. Got a lot of wise guy recruits. But then the war started and the new men flooded in- young men, like you- and they were all saluting me, wanting me to tell them what to do. I could see the fear in their eyes. They acted as if I knew something about war that was classified. They thought I could keep them alive. You did too, didn't you?'
Eddie had to admit he did.
The Captain reached back and rubbed his neck. 'I couldn't, of course. I took my orders, too. But if I couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.
For me, that little idea was what I told you guys every day. No one gets left behind. — Mitch Albom

When I was younger, I had conversations with friends about wanting to create something different. Every young musician probably thinks that. But it's difficult to do, because there are only so many words, notes, melodies, songs. But as soon as I stopped thinking and started feeling, it worked. I didn't realize it till I was done. — FKA Twigs

Most of my work comes from ideas. I can usually do only a few versions of each idea. Land Art and Body Art were particularly strong concepts which allowed for a lot of permutations. But nevertheless, I found myself wanting to move onward into something else. — Dennis Oppenheim

I don't know if I can."

I splayed my hand on the bulkhead beside Fran's shoulder and looked her in those pretty green eyes. "It's easier if you don't think about it. Shut it away, think about something else. Drink, fuck, do what you gotta do. Bury it so damn deep, it can't touch you. And before long, you'll forget what you were worried about."

Her lips turned down at the corners. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Is that what you do?"

"It works." Or it had. Until recently. Until One somehow made me look at myself though her eyes. Now I had shit going on in my head, like not wanting to let her down. Not wanting to let any of them down. Like this life and my place in it might actually mean something. That kinda thinking would get a man killed.

~ Caleb — Pippa DaCosta

The lazy are always wanting to do something. — Luc De Clapiers De Vauvenargues

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do. — Steven Soderbergh

I've definitely been in relationships with friends where I wanted to do something different than I know a friend has. It's that complicated balance between wanting to do what you know is right for you and not wanting to hurt someone's feelings. — Mickey Sumner

It's the balance between wanting the power of electronics and having something real happening - if you want people to engage in what you're doing, I think that's important. I want to have fun with people, but that's hard to do with a laptop. — Anna Meredith

If you're wanting something salty, do air-popped popcorn. That, to me, would be a healthier choice than having any kind of fried chip. — Bob Harper

The idea of using media for expressing yourself artistically is kind of something I learned from my mother and my father. So for me, I think growing up wanting to be an artist, I always imagined myself sort of crossing over or mixing media and so it was a natural evolution for me to try to express in a filmic way or in a visual way. It just kind of seems like a natural sort of progression for me in terms of what I'm trying to do as an artist. — Sean Lennon

The problem with the "wanting mind" is that even if you get what you think you want, it does not stop. It says, "All right, I have got the nice car, but now I need more money." It is always something that we do not have in the present moment - something that we want to obtain in order to satisfy our longing. — Jack Kornfield

All I know about getting something that you want is that there are three essential things: wanting, trying and getting the opportunity, the breaks. None works alone without the others. Wanting is basic. Trying is up to you. And the breaks - I do know this, they always happen. — Greer Garson

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. — Meg Jay

Sci-fi is definitely something that I've been wanting to do again since Panic Attack and I want to do it on a feature scale. — Fede Alvarez

You're like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities' desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone.
- Kate Daniels — Ilona Andrews

Learn how to manage your impulses. One strategy you can use is the rule of 2's. If you find yourself wanting to act on an impulse, tell yourself to wait for two days before doing something about it. If you think it is too long to wait for two days, ask two people if they think that what you want to do is wise. If there is no one to talk to, and your impulse really feels uncontrollable, ask yourself to wait for one hour. If your impulse or craving is still there after one hour, then you can allow yourself to indulge it. A person who — Daniel Hall

eople - even good, impressive people - always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want - not a result of wanting an impressive thing. — B.J. Novak

How can you possibly hope to reform her after the life she's been leading?'
'It's not her I'm wanting to reform - it's me,' he replied. 'Besides, it's taking me into a world where I can do some good.'
'I can't imagine you happy.'
'That's not the point.'
'Of course it isn't. But if she has a heart, she can't be happy either. She can't want you to do that.'
'No, she doesn't.'
'I see. But life ... '
'What about life?'
'Life demands something different.'
'Life only wants us to do the right things,' said Nekhlyudov.
-Resurrection — Leo Tolstoy

I cannot understand any woman's wanting to be the first woman to do anything ... It is a devastating burden and I could not take it, could not be a pioneer, a Symbol of Something Greater. — Nora Ephron

I started off singing when I was little. My parents have said I was singing at 3 years old. So I think it was just something I probably came into this world wanting to do and knowing I was going to do. — Brooke Elliott

Never give anyone the satisfaction of denying you something you need, and for that, what you have to do is to learn to need nothing. Starve the wanting part of you.
Dorothy Allison,
"Mama"
Trash — Dorothy Allison

If you focus your mind on "not wanting" something, you are giving energy to and manifesting the thing you do not want. If you worry or fixate on a problem, you are channeling energy to maintain the problem. Focus thoughts and beliefs on the solution, and do not fixate on the problem. — Russell Anthony Gibbs

In high school, theater was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't see that I was going to set it aside for so many years and take a right turn into television. Of course, wanting to do theater is something you hear a lot from actors. I think I've been embarrassed to be in that big cliche. — Mare Winningham

But, my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incompleted episodes? 'We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task ... ' It is wanting to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something. — Truman Capote

I'm so tired. I'm tired of anxiety that twists my stomach so hard I can't move the rest of my body. Tired of constant vigilance. Tired of wanting to do something about myself, but always taking easy way out. — Francesca Zappia

Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. But if I do have to draw such circles round myself, then it will be better for me to do it passively, in mere wonderment and gaping at the tremendous complex, taking home with me only the refreshment that this sight gives e contrario. — Franz Kafka

Communicate with your kids, and find out why they are so determined to be online at a certain time or what is worth arguing so strongly for. There may be people waiting for them to finish a project or go on a raid. They may have made a commitment to viewers wanting to watch them stream. They may have set a personal goal they want to meet. If you can get a sense of what their goals are, perhaps you can meet at a middle ground. I do not mean caving in to their demands, but if something is vitally important to your child, even if you can't see it yourself, it still tells you a lot about them. It isn't fair to use this information against them as punishment. Use the information to come up with a plan that will benefit everyone. — Cori Dusmann

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and then I got this call from a casting director in Los Angeles. She remembered me from something years before, and she called my mom wanting me to audition for this thing. — Scott Speedman

What did he do?" he murmured.
"He said something about if his words didn't put me in my place, he would find something that would. And then he slapped me."
Bram abruptly regretted not making use of the knife he'd carried in his boot to the Hampton soiree. He could understand Cosgrove desiring her and wanting to control her. But to strike her... Bram was accustomed to being angry; he'd spent most of the past ten years in varying states of it. What he felt as he listened to Rosamund, though, to the shake of her words and the despair in her voice, was deeper and hotter than anything he'd ever experienced. Plainly and simply, it was fury. White-hot, blood-boiling fury.
"Hope that he enjoyed hitting you, Rosamund," he said in a low voice, "because he will never touch you again. — Suzanne Enoch

All my girlhood I always planned to do something big ... something constructive. It's queer what ambitious dreams a girl has when she is young. I thought I would sing before big audiences or paint lovely pictures or write a splendid book. I always had that feeling in me of wanting to do something worth while. And just think, Laura ... now I am eighty and I have not painted nor written nor sung."
"But you've done lots of things, Grandma. You've baked bread ... and pieced quilts ... and taken care of your children."
Old Abbie Deal patted the young girl's hand. "Well ... well ... out of the mouths of babes. That's just it, Laura, I've only baked bread and pieced quilts and taken care of children. But some women have to, don't they? ... But I've dreamed dreams, Laura. All the time I was cooking and patching and washing, I dreamed dreams. And I think I dreamed them into the children ... and the children are carrying them out ... doing all the things I wanted to and couldn't. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I don't remember as a kid wanting to do or be anything else but drive something, be a race driver. — Mario Andretti

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning. — Stephen Chbosky

Here it is, all at once: rightness.
Not the graffiti itself, even though it's undeniably spectacular, but this feeling of making plans and carrying them them through, of meeting people and getting to know them, of being asked to do something and saying Yes, of wanting something, asking for it, making it happen. — Nina LaCour

The word lust [can] mean "selfish desire." ... It is wanting something so badly you will do anything to get it. That is one of the tricks of the devil. It is too high a price to pay. — Billy Graham

The Beauty of It If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all I need is right where I am. But being human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for. It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share. — Mark Nepo

There was a combination of not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but also really not wanting to be stuck in Lord of the Rings for the rest of my life, and being desperate to kind of make sure that I could do something else with my life. — Sean Astin

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family. — Jill Soloway

I loved reading Grimm's fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen, and I loved to dream about other worlds and other lives. Maybe that has something to do with having an incomplete family, being an only child. All I know is I loved to pretend, and all that was in tandem with my wanting to be an actress. — Lauren Bacall

All these questions about do you want to be king? It's not a question of wanting to be, it's something I was born into and it's my duty ... Wanting is not the right word. But those stories about me not wanting to be king are all wrong. — Prince William

I think; here I lie under a haystack ... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitely small in comparison with the rest of space, in which I am not, and which has nothing to do with me; and the period of time in which it is my lot to live is so petty beside the eternity in which I have not been, and shall not be ... And in this atom, this mathematical point, the blood is circulating, the brain is working and wanting something ... Isn't it loathsome? Isn't it petty? — Ivan Turgenev

Ask and you shall receive; everyone that asks receives. This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: If you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the Word and Spirit teach you to prat aright, but do not let go the confidence he seeks to waken: Everyone who asks receives ... Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore take the Master's word in all simplicity ... Let us beware of weakening the word with our human wisdom. — Andrew Murray

When our daughter, Alexandra, was about three years old, she used to wake up at night and come down the stairs into our room. Of course, we would have to take her back to bed. For a few months she was waking up two or three times a night and coming down. This was not long after I took over for my father and started pastoring. I was learning to minister, and there was a lot of stress and change just with that, so I wasn't sleeping much. One time I was telling Victoria, "We've just got to do something about Alexandra. She's coming down so much. You know, I'm just so tired. I'm not getting enough sleep." On and on. Victoria said something I'll never forget. She said, "Joel, just remember, twenty years from now, you'll give anything to hear those little footsteps coming down the stairs. You'll give anything to have her wanting to come into your room." That changed my whole perspective. I began looking forward — Joel Osteen

There is something within you that is wanting to emerge and greet this magnificent world.

Your invisibility serves no-one.
You deserve to be seen.
You deserve to be heard.
You deserve to let your magic out and for life to be a glorious adventure.

Do you think you're ready? It is time to remove the mask of invisibility; it is time to embrace the wonder of you. — Kelly Martin

Having to do something is an obligation, a duty, a will that is not your own. Wanting to do something is a choice that requires heart, desire, a will that is yours. Those two concepts are a universe apart. I wanted to, Abby — Ashlan Thomas

There are things that I would like to do, but I make a big distinction between liking to do something and wanting to do something. If there's something that I want to do I've done it. If there's something that comes up that I want to do I will do it. — Morgan Freeman

Our house was a collection of silences, each room a mute, empty frame, each of us three oscillating bodies (Mom, Dad, me) moving around in our own curved functions, from space to space, not making any noise, just waiting, waiting to wait, trying, for some reason, not to disrupt the field of silence, not to perturb the delicate equilibrium of the system. We wandered from room to room, just missing one another, on paths neither chosen by us nor random, but determined by our own particular characteristics, our own properties, unable to deviate, to break from our orbital loops, unable to do something as simple as walking into the next room where our beloved, our father, our mother, our child, our wife, our husband, was sitting, silent, waiting but not realizing it, waiting for someone to say something, anything, wanting to do it, yearning to do it, physically unable to bring ourselves to change our velocities. — Charles Yu

He leaned his head to me, his neck so close to my lips, I felt the heat coming off his skin. His breath was warm against my ear. His voice was a ragged snarl. "I miss you."
This wasn't happening.
"I worry about you." He dipped his head and looked into my eyes. "I worry something stupid will happen and I won't be there and you'll be gone. I worry we won't ever get a chance and it's driving me out of my skull."
No, no, no, no ...
We stared at each other. The tiny space between us felt too hot. Muscles bulged on his naked frame. He looked feral.
Mad gold eyes stared into mine. "Do you miss me, Kate?"
I closed my eyes trying to shut him out. I could lie then we would be back to square one. Nothing would be resolved. I'd still be alone, hating him and wanting him.
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me once. "Do you miss me?"
I took the plunge. "Yes. — Ilona Andrews

Who are we when we leave our families? Who do we become? What are we capable of? That's something that never leaves us. It begins at that point in your life when you leave the nest, and I don't think we stop wanting to explore that question. — Naomi Watts

Directing is something that I'd been wanting and hoping to do, as I've grown into myself. — Eric Balfour

As he stumbled along a high bright object caught his eyes; he looked up. Atop a building across the street, above the heads of the people, loomed a flaming cross. At once he knew that it had something to do with him. But why should they burn a cross? As he gazed at it he remembered the sweating face of the black preacher in his cell that morning talking intensely and solemnly of Jesus, of there being a cross for him, a cross for everyone, and of how the lowly Jesus had carried the cross, paving the way, showing how to die, how to love and live eternal. But he had never seen a cross burning like that one upon the roof. Were white people wanting him to love Jesus, too? — Richard Wright

It's people wanting to do something about global climate change. People fed up with the high price of gas. People tired of breathing dirty air. In Houston, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and other cities. It's going to be a critical mass of people experiencing something. — Ed Begley Jr.

I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time. — Howard Schultz

The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else. — John C. McGinley

She ate with her fingers, as her father did, for the first time in months, for the first time in this new house in Seattle. Akash sat between them in his booster seat, wanting to eat with his fingers, too, but this was something Ruma had not taught him to do. — Anonymous

True resistance begins with people confronting pain ... and wanting to do something to change it. — Bell Hooks

But it's not just "Do you want a hit?" More importantly, it has to be something we - the artist and I - like. If you go in just wanting a hit song, it's not going to happen that way. You have to first be committed to making music you like. — Lukasz Gottwald

When I was growing up, I would try to sing out of key very consciously. I was probably afraid of trying too hard to do something beautiful, and then I just wasn't good enough. But I've learned that I was also on the outside - wanting more challenge by living in that more conventional world. — Jenny Hval

But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more. — Dan Stevens

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

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

Wanting a more positive environment isn't enough. You need to do something, and it doesn't require a great deal of effort or some huge change in the way you approach things at work. — Tom Rath

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

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

Ty removed his fingers from Zane's back as he saw the shiver run through him, and he pressed his lips tightly together, looking up and away in disgust as he resigned himself to what he was about to do. Broaching the subject could possibly cost him his job if Zane went tattling to the higher-ups about sexual harassment or some shit, but Ty was going to do it anyway. "Anything you need to say to me?"
...
The visual of Ty's nude body flashed behind Zane's eyelids, and he spoke before he thought better of it. "Nothing you want to hear," he murmured as he faced the mirror, hoping to diffuse the situation. "Thanks for the help," he added, wanting desperately to get away from this tension.
...
"You sure about that?" Ty asked as his stomach fluttered nervously. His voice finally betrayed the nerves. "Trying to be a real partner to you here, Zane. If you need to tell me something, then here's your chance. — Abigail Roux

I could have argued that her wanting to do something for me meant she was ultimately acting in her own interests, but it might provoke more of the 'don't fuck with me' behaviour. — Graeme Simsion

Fuck my cousin, it's got nothing to do with my cousin for me. If you were alone, I'd still be right on this carpet, on my knees, wanting to be with you. If you were mated to a female, if you were dating someone all casual and shit, if you were in a million different places in life ... I'd still be right here. Begging you for something, anything one time, if that's all you've got. — J.R. Ward

I grew up with 'Cinderella.' So that was my go-to Disney film, definitely. It was princess-related, and coming from a smaller area in Illinois and wanting to do something greater than myself in Broadway, that was a film that I could really relate to. — Jodi Benson

There's not a day I live that doesn't start with me getting up and first saying, "What can I do for somebody else?" Whether that means sending something to one of my children or picking up the phone and calling a stranger who is in the hospital, I start every day by wanting more for others than I do for myself. — Wayne Dyer

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

It was palpable, all that wanting: Mother wanting something more, Dad wanting something more, everyone wanting something more. This wasn't going to do for us fifties girls; we were going to have to change the equation even if it meant ... abstaining from motherhood, because clearly that was where Mother got caught. — Anne Taylor Fleming

I think there's something about wanting to stand in the spotlight. I think the ball is a spotlight, for example, and I think they want to stand in that. I a lot of times see - LeBron is a guy that vacillates between wanting to do that and then wanting to get somebody else involved. — Phil Jackson

Some of you may feel that if you don't do something soon to change your life, you will be left by the roadside, alone, homeless and in despair. But is the despair not there as you reach and grapple to create or manifest your desires through your own effort and will? What happens if or when those things appear in your life? Joy? Peace? Or a temporary sense of relief?

What if it is relief from the wanting you have been craving for so long, not the outcome, but the relief from the constant wanting. — Kelly Martin

To stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make the person stop wanting to do it. — Orson Scott Card

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

How do you resign yourself to something that will never be? You stop wanting just that thing. You go numb. Or you kill the agent of desire. — Jenny Holzer

I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted. — Denise Mina

You don't become great, by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something and then doing it so hard, that you become great in the process. — Anonymous

I think they could of recast the children, I heard of people wanting to do something like that. That would be a nice little show to do but you know that show was of the 80's, I don't think the audience mind set is in that direction any longer. — Larry Hagman

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?"
"I can't remember. Which?"
"Do you know what those words mean?"
"Not really."
"An optimist is positive and hopeful. A pessimist is negative and cynical."
"I'm an optimist."
"Well, that's good, because there's no irrefutable evidence. There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family.
Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same.
That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us.
How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you? — Tracy Chevalier

I let myself feel good for no reason. I let joy happen right there and then, and it's inside me and around me, it's the lights on the road ahead, the clean black of the night, the cold air coming through the window. It's like hearing a song for the first time and being struck by it, haunted by it, wanting to hunt it down and catch it, because the song sums up something you didn't know you wanted to say, giving you chills and goose bumps. But even as you find out what it's called, and you're thinking you'll download it, you've already lost. Because the feeling was right then and there and it's already fading like a dream.
You just have to see those times for what they are: a chance to look down at your life. And when you do, you see it's a skin made up of shiny little moments. — Kirsty Eagar

Either the gods have power or they don't. If they don't,
why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else
instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to
feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they
can surely do that for us. - But those are things the gods left up to me.
Then isn't it better to do what's up to you - like a free man
- than to be passively controlled by what isn't, like a slave
or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don't care
about what's up to us?
Start praying like this and you'll see.
Not "some way to sleep with her" - but a way to stop
wanting to.
Not "some way to get rid of him" - but a way to stop
trying.
Not "some way to save my child" - but a way to lose your
fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens. — Marcus Aurelius

Women today are wanting to work in the workforce but also come home and learn to bake cupcakes, to do calligraphy, to knit a blanket for their baby, to 3-D print something. — Brit Morin

Don't be afraid when you have to pray fervently because of your circumstances. God is wanting to do something great through you! — Stormie O'martian

Boredom is actually the feeling of being trapped doing one thing while wanting to do something else. If we have no sense of being stuck, we simply leave the dull situation — Unknown

*After Skulduggery kills Valkyrie*
Skulduggery: This has been a good day so far, all things considered, I have the location of the Grotesquey and I got to kill Valkyrie, which admittedly is something I've been wanting to do since I met her, she can be incredibly annoying
Scapegrace: Um
Skulduggery: She hardly ever shut up, I pretended to be the friends with her, but honestly, I just felt sorry for the poor girl. Not the brightest you know.
Valkyrie: You're such a goon. — Derek Landy

I don't blame any director for wanting to do something more commercial. That's all part of the business. I certainly have done it, as an actor. — Steve Buscemi

Stop wanting wealth and fame and start wanting instead to do something well about which you are passionate — Stephen Fry

I spent a month in India and where I learnt an important word for me, for everything that had come before and after, and the was the word 'seva' - the work you do without wanting reward, simply for the work itself, for the spiritual, for the practice and the experience it gives you by doing that work. I began to realise it was something I was searching for all my life, that I was doing theatre not for myself but for something for a search, for a seeking for something that is behind that, to find a truth somewhere about us. — George Ogilvie

All notions of probable innocence aside, he seemed more at ease again, though somewhat more alert than before. Rudolf looked at her, more serious now.
"A lot of men who kill have got a reason for what they do. Some are forced into it or have a threat hanging over their heads, natural inclinations they can't ignore or a festering hatred caused by someone or something."
Cassia wondered about hatred and that fire of anger that smouldered inside of her, wanting to see the Nemorans slaughtered for what they did to her sisters. She didn't just want justice, she wanted vengeance. Yet, she felt that went beyond hatred into hurt and the desire to protect others from their violence. — Mara Amberly

For so long, I was searching for something to be proud of. But at a certain point, I realized, 'Wait, I'm doing what I want to be doing. I'm not wanting to do it; I'm doing it.' And that's awesome. — Pink

If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are disturbed as to how, by, and against whom wealth and political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wanting to act with others, to "do something," you have much in common with the writers of the three essays in Manifesto. — Adrienne Rich

In Letters to a Young Poe, Rilke says, 'The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person's solitude.' That's what I want. For other people to love each other without having to partake in them, to possess them, to allow them to be their own inside their solitude, to protect that. I wish people respected each other's aloneness. I wish I could write something very beautiful and erotic without worrying about people wanting to use me to fulfill some fantasy--which I have no control over, and often, has nothing to do with me--inside themselves. — Kristen Kosmas

I don't have a favorite genre. I mean, I always sort of base it on instinct. And it does seem to be that after I finish something that is very dramatic, I end up inevitably wanting to do a comedy or something like that. — Carla Gugino

I love what I do. I have an insatiable appetite for creating things and wanting to get better at what I do and always growing and never stopping. I don't know. It's something I was born with. It's definitely a drive. It's a passion, and it's driven for a love for what I do. — Jennifer Lopez

I know it sounds selfish, wanting to do something no one else has done. But that's what you're out here for - to separate yourself from everyone else. — Jack Nicklaus

Do you know last year, when I thought I was going to have a child, I'd decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn't thought about religion before; I haven't since; but just at that time, when I was was waiting for the birth, I thought, 'That's the one thing I can give her. It doesn't seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.' It was odd, wanting to give something one had lost oneself — Evelyn Waugh