c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she's never been told about.
— Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife
I don’t understand hospital chaplains that try to rob my patients of their anger. Sometimes anger is a key motivator that gets people to take action. Anger can push a cancer patient to jump out of his hospital bed, walk down to the nurses station and scream, “I am getting the hell out of here!”. There is a misconception that God is simply sweet and passive. Actually, God can be quite cunning, manipulative and relentless with his children. What we consider as negative traits are actually helpful in molding us. He will use a negative emotion if needed to push people to do things that will change them for the better. He will allow people or situations to derail us if there is a chance that those interactions will push us forward. Personally, I don’t want a God that is going to send some church member to my deathbed with a plate of cookies and tell me to have faith. Actually, I rather have a God that screams, “Get the hell off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Walk down the hall with that Physical Therapist so you can get on with your life!" A little anger in a person can push them to do amazing things.
— Shannon L. Alder
I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occured to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Love, is sometimes a simpler form of slowly dying, it's like a bullet that ricochets off time's walls of desire, waiting to hit that picture perfect heart of regrets.
— Anthony Liccione
Who people think they are and what people think they want is not really who they are or what they want.
— Laurie Frankel, Goodbye for Now
The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
— George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts
It's not that I feel alone because I have no friends because I have lots of friends. I know that I have people who can hold me and reassure me and talk to ne and care for me and think of me but they can't be inside my head with me all the time - for all time.
— Rob Ryan, This Is for You
You know you love something if you're willing to die for it, and you know it means nothing if you walk away from that which is dying.
— Anthony Liccione
I want to love every piece of you. I want to be inside you. I want our bodies together, to make the two of us into one. I want it all, and I want it hard, soft, anything that will make you happy. I want to hold you, keep you safe, make you scream... I want to make you gasp and tremble and lose control, like I'm losing control. And tip over the edge. And fall." He kissed her again. "And fall," he whispered against her lips. "I want to make you fall in love with me. The way I'm in love with you." (Noah Kincaid)
— Robyn Carr, Forbidden Falls
I want to undress you, touch you, kiss you, taste you. And then I want you to taste yourself on my mouth." He kissed her again, hot and strong and long. One hand crept to her clothed breast, kneading it. "I want you hard and hot and deep and fast. And then I want you slow and sweet. I want you to wrap those beautiful long legs around me. I want you under me and on top of me and sitting and standing. I want to see your eyes when pleasure makes you light up. I want to hold you when you come down and try to find your breath. I want everything with you, Ellie. I care about you more than I've cared about a woman in so long. I hardly recognized the feelings. I'm dying for you." (Noah Kincaid)
— Robyn Carr, Forbidden Falls
Then, as a single snowflake flares and flickers upon voicing its final breath, so two eyes make silent conversation with mine. A face as iridescent as candle-fire purls verse and poetry. My eyes read her every intent as a wave of recollections floods my senses.
— Craig Froman, An Owl on the Moon: A Journal from the Edge of Darkness
The Warrior looks at the column of Fear, where he reads: “you are about to enter an unknown and dangerous world where all that you have learned up to now will be of no use whatsoever.”The Warrior of Light looks at the column of Desire, where he reads: “you are about to leave a known world where all the things you always wanted and all that you have fought so hard for are kept.”The Warrior smiles, because nothing can frighten him and nothing can hold him. With the confidence of those who know what they want, he opens the door.
— Paulo Coelho
You Are What You EatTake food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)
— Christopher  Ryan
An unknown force is calling mePerhaps the voice of that star perched on the last heightPerhaps the desire to see the spaces that conceal Europe
— Hélène Baronne d’Oettingen, The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology
Or she would look at him with a sullen expression, once again he would see before him a face worthy of figuring in Botticelli's Life of Moses, he would place her in it, he would give her neck the necessary inclination; and when he had well and truly painted her in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the idea that she had nevertheless remained here, by the piano, in the present moment, ready to be kissed and possessed, the idea of her materiality and her life would intoxicate him with such force that, his eyes distracted, his jaw tensed as though to devour her, he would swoop down upon that Botticelli virgin and begin pinching her cheeks.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
The human erotic imagination is a vast wilderness of sexual possibilities. We are each capable of enjoying a pleasurable, satisfying and potentially ecstatic sex life. Yet our culture encourages us to keep the window of possibility very narrow, limiting our erotic expression to a short list of approved activities and energies. To truly experience sexual freedom, you must reclaim your erotic imagination and allow yourself to make your sex life a work of art, your very own creation designed to fulfill your unique needs and desires.
— Chris Maxwell Rose, The Fantasy Method: How To Discover Your Authentic Sexual Desires and Create a Fulfilling Sex Life
Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love
— Sigmund Freud
Do me a favor? Be a gentleman tomorrow?
— Cora Carmack, Losing It
We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
The timbre of his voice went into that low register that made my insides curl in on themselves--it was like my uterus was tapping out a happy dance on the rest of my organs.
— Cora Carmack, Losing It
Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum.
— Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover: A Romance
Psalm 37:44 Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
— LaNina King
I began with the desire to speak with the dead.
— Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England
The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
I feel alive when you kiss me.
— Missy Lyons
Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.
— Albert Camus, A Happy Death
Pay attention to what you pray for. Your prayers are not just a reflection of your desires and hopes; they are a guide for personal behavior. PRAY it, BE it, and you will SEE it.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
I barely brushed towards her cheek as I moved towards her mouth, her nails tickled my chest, driving me insane. Kissing her became my single reason for breathing.
— Katie McGarry
Sex, once a law as undisputed as gravity, has been disproved. The equation is erased, the blackboard broken
— Isaac Marion
You have no concept of fairness, apart from your desire to have your own way. I suggest you put that notion from your head, because despite what you believe, the realms will not cater to your whims, and neither will I.
— Dawn Jayne, Uprising
Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve were doing when they got into so much trouble? As I read the story, they were shopping. The forbidden fruit was not scattered throughout the garden, not in many places, not in multiple locations, but one place, one site, one location and one location only. Perhaps they just came upon it, “Oh, look, the forbidden fruit…” or, perhaps, they were looking for something, searching, shopping. Somewhere in their dissatisfaction they thought, “If only we had something more…
— David W. Jones, Enough: And Other Magic Words to Transform Your Life
The supernova sun would be cooler than the fire lighting our desire.
— Missy Lyons, Alien Promise
Blake inspires instant, tender Blakelust in everyone he meets. All of his beauties are meant to be touched, and he likes to be touched.
— John  Valentine, Puppies
Knowing why we are married & should stay married is crucial. The key question is: Will we approach marriage from a God-centered view or a man-centered view? In a man-centered view, we will maintain our marriage as long as our earthly comforts, desires, & expectations are met. In a God-centered view, we preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God & points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator.
— G. Thomas
You might be able to kiss like a rock star, but you’ve got to get over this macho trip. You don’t own me.
— Missy Lyons, Alien Promise
To become desireless, to not want anything external to ourselves, means we rest in ourselves, whole, joyous and happy. In this state, our true nature is constant love, unending love, giving love.
— Lawrence Crane, The Abundance Book
I saw you, and I wanted to be close to you. I wanted you to let me in. I wanted to know you in a way no one else did. I wanted you, all of you. That wanting nearly drove me mad. And now that I have you, the only thing that terrifies me is having to go back to that place. Having to want you all over again, with no hope of my desire ever being fulfilled.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Finale
Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness.Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease.
— Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World
The intelligent desire self-control
—  children want candy.
Because I know it in my bones. You are the only female I desire, the only water that will quench my thirst, the only sun that will warm my skin, the only lips that were made for mine.
— Dannika Dark, Impulse
She nodded against me. “Do you need me to do anything?” I didn’t need a thing from her, but I wanted everything. I wanted her to leave Tyler, to love me, to want to live here with me for the rest of our lives. I wanted so damn much. ”Just go back to sleep, then enjoy the rest of the day with the girls. I’ll be back tonight.” ”I’ll be waiting her for you.” Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in and held it. if only she knew what she did to me.
— Molly McAdams, From Ashes
She hates everything that is not what she longs for.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystalsurrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,or cherries, the rich spurt in the backof the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.Give me the lover who yanks open the doorof his house and presses me to the wallin the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenchedand shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatloadand begin their delicious diasporathrough the cities and small towns of my body.To hell with the saints, with martyrsof my childhood meant to instruct mein the power of endurance and faith,to hell with the next world and its pallid angelsswooning and sighing like Victorian girls.I want this world. I want to walk intothe ocean and feel it trying to drag me alonglike I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,and I want to resist it. I want to gostaggering and flailing my waythrough the bars and back rooms,through the gleaming hotels and weedylots of abandoned sunflowers and the parkswhere dogs are let off their leashesin spite of the signs, where they sniff eachother and roll together in the grass, I want tolie down somewhere and suffer for love untilit nearly kills me, and then I want to get up againand put on that little black dress and waitfor you, yes you, to come over hereand get down on your knees and tell mejust how fucking good I look.- “For Desire
— Kim Addonizio
Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
— Adrienne Rich
Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.
— Philip Sington, The Valley of Unknowing
Love is the castle, doubt is the moat, desire is the paddle and hope is the boat.
— Kellie Elmore
I eyed her like a thirsty traveler in the desert looks at a pail of water.
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
We don't just want what we want because we want it
—  we want what we want because that's what we've learned to want.
I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.
— Ray Bradbury, A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories
One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can't breathe around it and you realize you don't need air.
— Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever
Having begun to feel, people’s desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions.
— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
And do I still have that look?" he asked."Yes just there," she kissed his eye. "The desire to love me is still there. If you look closely you can see mine for you, my tears never washed it away.
— Racquel McDonnell
In the history of a soul’s evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured.
— Virchand Gandhi
It always rains on the unloved-wet dreams-a fishing expedition-she kisses wyverns (the disneyland analogy)-dinner etiquette and chocolate lovers-desire swears by the first circle-"things are changing"-what can possibly go wrong?
— Neil Gaiman, Brief Lives
But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
My heart does not desire what my eyes does not admire.
— Habeeb Akande
I hate this,” he muttered, lowering his forehead until it rested on mine. “I hate him. I hate what he does to you. I hate that I can’t stop him.” My heart melted as pain registered on his beautiful face. Without thinking, I lifted my hand and slid it along Ethan’s cheek. He covered my hand with his own and nuzzled it softly. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. What I saw in them made my breath falter. There was anger and pain, but above all there was…something else. Something that made my heart beat frantically and my whole body vibrate. There was desire.
— Jamie Canosa, How We Came To Be
It’s a slow sultry song. She opens her mouth and what comes out can only be described as dripping with sex. The climax of the song comes and the college boys are cat calling her but she doesn't seem to notice at all. She’s completely in the song, eyes half mast, a slight smile on her lips, and hips methodically rolling to the beat. She’s pure sex and every male in the bar is thinking the same thing I am. What would she be like in my bed. She absent mindedly trails her hand from her collarbone down between her breasts to her belly. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. My jeans instantly get too tight in the crotch and I adjust myself discreetly while everyone’s eyes are still on her. 
— K. Larsen, Saving Caroline
I don't want to be dying. I want to be dead.
— Girl234
He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.
— Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
The truth is that the fever of desire in youth is fleeting disease that intimacy promptly cure.
— Frank Harris, My Life and Loves
And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.
— Anaïs Nin
You ask me why I don’t love you, but surely you must believe I am very fond of you and if to desire to possess a person wholly, to admire and honour that person deeply, and to seek to secure that person’s happiness in every way is to “love” then perhaps my affection for you is a kind of love. I will tell you this that your soul seems to me to be the most beautiful and simple soul in the world and it may be because I am so conscious of this when I look at you that my love or affection for you loses much of its violence.
— James Joyce, Pyhä, rivo rakkaus – Kirjeitä Noralle
In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love for a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious.
— David Levithan, Every Day
...Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack.
— Jacques Lacan
I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire—well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are the ones that have to make the journey, fight the monster, kneel before whomever is big on kneeling these days. Bones do the work for the heart's grand plans. Bones know what you need. Hearts only know want.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
Everyone lusts. Everyone Fantasizes. When your lover respects you, you should feel free to explore your desires. No matter how extreme.
— Jayne Rylon, Kate's Crew
Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for answers or what. I always get annoyed when in books or movies characters want clear things for clear reasons, because my experience of humanness is that I always want messy things for messy reasons.
— John Green
Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.
— Jean Rhys, Quartet
That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.
— Edgar Allan Poe
So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it.
— Emily Giffin, Where We Belong
You shouldn't blame others for the conditions you endure
—  we each have the freedom to follow which path we desire in life.
She stayed beside me until I slept, waveringly, brilliantly, hooded in diaphanous scarlet, and occasionally she left an imperative written in lipstick on my dusty windowpane. BE AMOROUS! she exhorted one night and, another night, BE MYSTERIOUS! Some nights later, she scribbled: WHEN YOU BEGIN TO THINK, YOU LOSE THE POINT.
— Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
What is allowed us is disagreeable, what is denied us causes intense desire.
— Jeff Wheeler, The Blight of Muirwood
Humans do not simply, innocently, and honestly disagree with each other about the good, the just, the right, the principles and applications of moral distinction and valuation, for they are already caught, like it or not, in a complex dynamic of each other’s desires, recognition, power, and comparisons which not only relativizes moral distinctions and valuations, but makes them a constant and dangerous source of discord.
— Gregory B. Sadler
When the human being says:'It is not true...'He may mean:'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'Or:'I don't like it.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Thou art a votary to fond desire
— William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Five seconds, and my body's humming. I go half-man, half-machine, and my thoughts go straight to touching her more, to how far I want to go, how far she might want to go, and damn, I start to hurt. No amount of music or hard work will fix this. My body's a beast. A beast that's been held back too long.
— Susan Vaught, Going Underground
Open your mind to the infinite possibilities that exist for you
—  then create within your reality the things that you desire.
MINISTER: All he has done is to find some means of bewitching the intelligence. He has only induced a radical suspension of disbelief. As in the early days of the cinema, all the citizens are jumping through the screen to lay their hands on the naked lady in the bathtub!AMBASSADOR: And yet, in fact, their fingers touch flesh.MINISTER: They believe they do. Yet all they touch is substantial shadow.AMBASSADOR: And what a beautiful definition of flesh! You know I am only substantial shadow, Minister, but if you cut me, I bleed. Touch me, I palpitate!
— Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
You can keep going on much less attention than you crave.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Each of us has immense potential to achieve what we desire, unless we enliven and enlighten our life with inspiration, bring our dreams or desires into reality we will never shine as bright as our potential.
— Steven Redhead, Keys to The Laws of Creation
Each of us has immense potential to achieve what we desire, unless you enliven and enlighten your life with inspiration, bring your dreams into reality through the power of desire you will never shine as bright as your potential.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire.
— George Eliot, Silas Marner
Though it doesn’t feel like it, crisis places us front and center of desire, which is the force of power.
— S. Kelley Harrell, Gift of the Dreamtime - Reader's Companion
We need to make our own miracles, it is a wasted exercise to just wait for miracles to happen; they need a spark of energy and desire to make them come true.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing
— David Lodge, Small World
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.
— Sonya Hartnett, Surrender
Patience can be bitter but her fruit is always sweet.
— Habeeb Akande
Every man becomes the image of the God he adores.He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead.He who loves corruption rots.He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.
— Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life
Essential to life, is desiring the things that you need, than needing the things you desire.
— Anthony Liccione
I would be unfair to myself if I said I did not try. I did, even if desultorily. But desire is a curious thing. If it does not exist it does not exist and there is nothing you can do to conjure it up. Worse still, as I discovered, when desire begins to sink, like a capsizing ship it takes down a lot with it. In our case it took down the conversation, the laughter, the sharing, the concern, the dreams and nearly - the most important thing, the most important thing - and nearly the affection too. Soon my sinking desire had taken everything else down with it to the floor of the sea, and only affection remained like the bobbing hand of a drowning man, poised perilously between life and death. More than once she tried to seize the moment and open up the issue. She did it with a hard face and a soft face; she did it when I was idling on the terrace and when I was in the thick of my works; first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We need to talk.Yes.Do you want to talk?Sure.What's happening?I don't know.Is there someone else?No.Is it something I did?Oh no.Then what the hell's happening?I don't know.Is there anything you want to talk to me about?I don't know.What do you mean you don't know?I don't know.What do you mean you don't know?I don't know. That's what I mean - I don't know.Toc toc toc. All the while I tried to save that bobbing hand - of affection - from vanishing. I felt somehow that if it drowned there would not be a single pointer on the wide stormy surface to show me where our great love had once stood. That bobbing hand of affection was a marker, a buoy, holding out the hope that one day we could salvage the sunken ship. If it drowned, our coordinates would be completely lost and we would not know where to even begin looking. Even in my weird state, it was an image of such desolation that it made my heart lurch wildly. *** For a long time, with her immense pride in herself - in us - she did not turn to anyone for help. Not friends, not family. For simply too long she imagined this was a passing phase, but then, as the weeks rolled by, through slow accretion the awful truth began to settle on her. By then she had run through all the plays of a relationship: withdrawal, sulking, anger, seduction, inquisition, affection, threat. Logic, love, lust.Now the epitaph was beginning to creep up on her. Acceptance. 
— Tarun J. Tejpal
As a general rule, desire is always marketable: we don’t do anything but sell, buy, exchange desires. . . . And I think of Bloy’s words: “there is nothing perfectly beautiful except what is invisible and above all unbuyable.
— Roland Barthes, The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collège de France, 1977-1978
It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts, but benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.
— George MacDonald, Phantastes
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow.
— Marilynne Robinson
Adrian's tone suggested that the desire for something was all it took. They all live with endless possibilities, leave their homes for the sake of something new. But the dream is woven from the fabric of freedom. For desire to exist it requires the element of possibility, and that for Kai has never existed, until now...
— Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love
This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.
— Lauren Willig, The Garden Intrigue
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets...
— Sara Shepard, Flawless
Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
The more this guy talked, the more he sounded like a fortune cookie.
— Kelly Creagh, Nevermore
In my experience, boys are predictable. As soon as they think of something, they do it. Girls are smarter—they plan ahead. They think about not getting caught.
— Eoin Colfer, Half-Moon Investigations
Well, good-bye for now," he said, rolling his neck as if we hadn't been talking about anything important at all. He bowed at the waist, those wings vanishing entirely, and had begun to fade into the nearest shadow when he went rigid.His eyes locked on mine wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock—pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled. "What is—" I began.He disappeared—simply disappeared, not a shadow in sight—into the crisp air.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses
I would prefer not to.
— Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies.
— Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant
Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy - but mysterious. But above all black says this: "I don’t bother you - don’t bother me".
— Yohji Yamamoto
Little girls think it's necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it's a shame...I'm all about mystery.
— Stevie Nicks
We bring the fucking rain Q, not the scattered showers.
— John Green
The story you choose to tell isn't always the story you believe.
— Nova Ren Suma, Imaginary Girls
Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Don't judge a book by its cover
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
You look back on some little decision you made and realize all the things that happened because of it, and you think to yourself "if only I'd known," but, of course, you couldn't have known.
— Mary Downing Hahn, The Dead Man in Indian Creek
Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
I pulled out Riptide.
— Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.
— Rabindranath Tagore
Let me tell you, you either have chemistry or you don't, and you better have it, or it's like kissing some relative. But chemistry, listen to me, you got to be careful. Chemistry is like those perfume ads, the ones that look so interesting and mysterious but you dont even know at first what they're even selling. Or those menues without the prices. Mystery and intrigue are gonna cost you. Great looking might mean something ve-ry expensive, and I don't mean money. What I'm saying is, chemistry is a place to start, not an end point.
— Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming
They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They never tell you that when you watch someone you once loved dying, hovering between this life and the next, it's twice as painful, because you're reliving two lives that traveled one road together.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defense I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915.
— Laurie R. King
I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.
— Charlaine Harris, Shakespeare's Landlord
The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
Nancy, every place you go, it seems as if mysteries just pile up one after another.
— Carolyn Keene, The Message in the Hollow Oak
I always wanted to eat with a Negro,” Grandma said.Yeah, well I always wanted to eat with a boney-assed old white woman,” Lula said. “So I guess this works out good.
— Janet Evanovich, Four to Score
I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains.
— Agatha Christie, Appointment with Death
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
— Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all.
— Deanna Raybourn, Silent in the Grave
In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.
— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Life isn't as magical here, and you're not the only one who feels like you don't belong, or that it's better somewhere else. But there ARE things worth living for. And the best part is you never know what's going to happen next.
— O.R. Melling, The Summer King
Nice day for a funeral.
— Anthony Horowitz, The Falcon's Malteser
Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.
— Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
The man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing," mused the Inspector, "Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times... What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off the treasure! How's that?""On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside," said Holmes.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.
— John D. MacDonald, Darker Than Amber
Flowers are fragile and ephemeral...Even if you meant to protect them with a surrounding fence from wind and rain, they would die without sunlight...and a spindly fence has no power against a strong wind. - Haibara Ai
— Gosho Aoyama
A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.'(Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absur
— John  Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Volumes 1-4, Diary (1755-1804) and Autobiography
This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the sea's lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked in the sunset hour.And the sunset itself on such waves of etherThat I just can't comprehendWhether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.
— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.""Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.
— Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
When was the last time you were kissed?" he went on easily. "And I'm not talking about the dry, noncommittal, meaningless kiss you forget about as soon as it's over." I scrambled out of my stupor long enough to quip, "Like last night's kiss?" He cocked an eyebrow. "That so? I wonder, then, why you moaned my name after you drifted to sleep." "I did not!""If only I'd had a video recorder. When was the last time you were really kissed?" he repeated."You seriously think I'm going to tell you?" "Your ex?" he guessed. "And if he was?""Was it your ex who taught you to be ashamed and uncomfortable with intimacy? He took from you what he wanted, but never seemed to be around when you wanted something back, isn't that right? What do you want, Britt?" he asked me point-blank. "Do you really want to pretend like last night never happened?" "Whatever happened between me and Calvin isn't your business,” I fired back."For your information, he was a really great boyfriend. I-I wish I was with him right now!" I exclaimed untruthfully. My careless comment made him flinch, but he recovered quickly."Does he love you?" "What?" I said, flustered.  "If you know him so well, it shouldn't be a hard question. Is he in love with you? Was he ever in love with you?"I tossed my head back haughtily. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to cut him down because you're-you're jealous of him!" "You're damn right I'm jealous,” he growled. "When I kiss a girl, I like to know she's thinking about me, not the fool who gave her up.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
I'm a conundrum. Or an enigma. I forget which.
— James A. Owen, The Shadow Dragons
Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all...
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.
— Neil Armstrong
The name of this book is mysterious.
— Pseudonymous Bosch
The longer I looked into his eyes the more I felt that he was leading me down a road that I was determined not to follow.
— Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Volition
In feature films the director is God
—  in documentary films God is the director.
Things'll get worse before they get better.
— Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying
There is something in this world which no one has ever seen.It is soft and sweet.If it is spotted, I'm sure everyone will want to have it,Which is why no one has ever seen it.For this world has hidden it quite well, so that it is difficult to obtain.But, there will come a day when it is discovered by somebody,And only those who should obtain it will be able to find it.That is all.
— Yuyuko Takemiya, とらドラ!
Indeed. I have often thought that when a man selects one word over another he often reveals far more of himself than he intended.
— Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
— James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss
What about you?" I kept my voice carefully indifferent. He flashed me a cold smile, sharp at the edges. "Worried about me?" Because I couldn't think of anything snide to say, I stuck my tongue out at him. Jude wagged his head. "More tongue exercises? Would have thought you'd had enough last night." "Go to hell." "Sorry, love, but we're already there.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.
— Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women