Top 100 Not Wanting Quotes
#1. Dreams larger
than ourselves we killed, not wanting
our smallness measured against them."
(poem: Having Taken the Necessary Precautions)
Brian Patten
#2. I also care that the public are getting their 12 dollars worth when they go to a movie, and that they're not coming out not wanting to ever see a movie with me in it again.
Jeremy Jackson
#4. All my life I did not want it to be only words. This is why I lived, because I kept not wanting it. And now, too, every day I want it not to be words.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#5. It's a curse - this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.
Margaret Mitchell
#6. I don't blame folks for not wanting to put me in their movies or whatever. I understand if their audiences had an association with me.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#7. [My work is] maybe about me maybe not wanting to be me and wanting to be all these other characters. Or at least try them on.
Cindy Sherman
#8. I have this reputation of not wanting to talk to the media, which isn't true. What I don't like-what a lot of us don't understand-is how we can say one thing and it turns up in print as something else.
Vijay Singh
#9. There was nothing wrong with being a homebody. There was nothing wrong with not wanting - not needing - the constant jostle and noise of a party or bar or... whatever.
Charles De Lint
#10. We're showing a situation that these kids are caught in and being forced to do but the violence is not glorified. Most of the kids in there are not wanting to be doing it.
Liam Hemsworth
#11. I get lost in you," I whisper, wishing I could see her face but not wanting to move her. "Mm," she says. "But it's the kind of lost that's like being found.
Kristen Proby
#12. I still worry that I could be better. That's where standards come from, from not wanting to settle. The fear of not being good enough propels you.
April Bloomfield
#13. You're like a starving person whose stomach is shrunk up from not having any food. You're shrunk up from not wanting nothing.
Larry McMurtry
#14. After getting recognized in public from my picture on our pretzel bag, I can understand not wanting to be in the public eye. It has given me a public persona I had always avoided as a child. I do it because it's for a good cause.
Nell Newman
#15. Not wanting to die was another universal constant, it seemed.
Robert J. Sawyer
#16. There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.
John Steinbeck
#17. Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.
John Waters
#18. Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.
Jodi Picoult
#19. The newspaper, delivered daily to my mailbox, is a convenience I need to help start my fire in the morning. Not wanting to waste anything, I sometimes even read it.
Bernd Heinrich
#20. People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know.
Hanif Kureishi
#21. Thinking of yourself as a destiny, not wanting to be 'other' than you are -that is under such circumstances the highest wisdom.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#22. (disliking people rarely being a sufficient reason for not wanting them to like us).
Alain De Botton
#23. Think of a flabby person covered with layers of fat. That is what your mind can become - flabby, covered with layers of fat till it becomes too dull and lazy to think, to observe, to explore, to discover ... not wanting to be disturbed or questioned into wakefulness.
Anthony De Mello
#24. Well, you have the public not wanting any new spending, you have the Republicans not wanting any new taxes, you have the Democrats not wanting any new spending cuts, you have the markets not wanting any new borrowing, and you have the economists wanting all of the above. And that leads to paralysis.
Michael Bloomberg
#25. This is love, and the trouble with it: it can make you embarrassed. Love is really liking someone a whole lot and not wanting to screw that up. Everybody's chewed this over. This unites us, this part of love.
Daniel Handler
#27. If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#28. And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.
Jill Lepore
#29. I think the main problem people have getting older, whether they know it or not, is that you're closer to dying. And we may fixate on not wanting to look a certain way, but it really is just the clock ticking, that it means, "Oh, I am not immortal!".
Elizabeth Lesser
#30. If you want to preserve your virginity, it's about not wanting to belong to the human species.
Catherine Breillat
#31. I've spent my life navigating through sensitive issues. Not wanting to upset people.
Barry McGuigan
#32. If life didn't give you at least one person not wanting you to succeed then half of us would lose are motivation to climb that cliff, in order to prove them wrong.
Shannon L. Alder
#33. I think the art world heightens the intensity of desires for inclusion, and the humiliations of exclusion, which is why it's a great place to circulate when you are in the lucky position, as I am, of not wanting or needing anything from anyone.
Rachel Kushner
#34. All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wildness, in themselves or nature.
Bell Hooks
#35. Outwardly mocking, but never quite to the point if not wanting to participate.
Robyn Schneider
#36. I was craving a chance at the lifelong fantasy, and I had that. That was a one-off thing. I was looking for an experience, Eric, not wanting to cultivate a habit.
Nikki Sex
#37. I can understand not wanting to underuse Hawke, but after a while the narrative composition starts to look like a dad's testimony at a custody hearing.
Anonymous
#38. I don't like remembering the way that hurt her. Hurts her. I'm sure it still does; I'm just not around to see, and I don't like dwelling on that, either. That's only normal. Missing people you still love, and not wanting to see them in pain and angry and humiliated.
Caitlin R. Kiernan
#39. I don't for one moment believe that these folks believe that it is better for an infant or a toddler to be in day care than to be home with Mom. I do believe that these folks feel guilty for not wanting to be at home, so they devise a new reality to compensate for their uncomfortable feelings.
Laura Schlessinger
#40. Changing someone's life is not the best, is not wanting to change the other life. It is being who you are that changes another's life. Do you understand?
Juliette Binoche
#41. I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or a political musician. It becomes this thing where somehow your art can no longer exist on its own and be multifaceted.
Carrie Brownstein
#42. The longer you stay in the job that you do the more you learn about what those around you do. As an actor I've always nosed around apologetically about: "oh wouldn't it be interesting if I could do that?" I can't imagine not wanting to do this everyday.
Jason Bateman
#43. Men make this great pretense of not wanting to be caught, but in the end they usually beg for a lady's hand.
Elizabeth Boyle
#44. Not wanting to disappoint is what pushed me to be successful.
Jerry Rice
#45. While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.
Andrew Motion
#46. Only audiences decide what's a franchise. Only audiences decide what's a hit. I have always been mindful of not wanting to be the Miami Heat of movies.
Nina Jacobson
#47. I try to hang on to as much mystery as possible. How can we go through our lives not wanting to have any element of surprise?'
Charlize Theron
#48. It's okay. I'm used to people not wanting me at their parties." I pushed to my feet. The stars seemed to twirl a bit with the movement. "No big
deal.
J. Lynn
#49. I have gone to many theaters where it is so unpleasant with the commercials before the movie, the volume, and the disrespect of the filmgoers. So I understand people not wanting to go to the theater.
Jeff Garlin
#50. I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.
Helmut Newton
#51. My biggest mistake: not wanting to help myself into thinking I am happy, that change would come about without really trying to change, or wanting to change. Procrastinating about changing. I do want to change.
Beatrice Sparks
#52. I can't even remember not wanting to go to film school.
Danny McBride
#53. Happy is measuring your life against the options and not wanting to change it. It's getting the best of a series of bargains, bad or otherwise.
Chaz Brenchley
#54. I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they'll run the other way.
Hedy Lamarr
#55. The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.
Lev Grossman
#56. I had spent my entire career not wanting to talk about weight, not wanting to deal with it, wanting to be an actor first.
Sara Rue
#57. People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.
Megan Abbott
#59. I was always, as a younger actress, very conscious of not wanting to act sexy. I didn't see myself like that. But I think as a woman, you get older, you feel more confident in your sexuality. You're not as intimidated by it, not as embarrassed by it.
Reese Witherspoon
#60. she had been moping around school, not wanting to do anything besides painting and reading books.
Kim Richardson
#61. Not wanting to see, not wanting to be in touch with one's experience is something akin to cognitive laziness, an eclipse of the experiencer or inner witnessing in the person.
Claudio Naranjo
#62. I can't imagine anybody not wanting to make sure that noncitizens don't dilute legitimate U.S. citizens' vote.
Rick Scott
#63. It was the feeling of not wanting to live in the world, even if it was the only place to live.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#64. Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.
J.K. Rowling
#65. Impatience is not wanting to understand that you don't understand.
James Richardson
#66. In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting.
Alfred Lansing
#67. I went for the door and opened it, not wanting to see how much this corpse was willing to destroy to get into my bedroom. His body probably would've crumbled to pieces before he got in, and I had no clue how to get dead guy out of the carpet.
Kelly Hashway
#68. It seems the most common thing for serial interventionists to do these days is to lob the term 'isolationist' at anyone who does not agree with their latest folly, and then set up a straw man about those people not wanting to be involved in the world.
Rand Paul
#69. I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.
Brice Marden
#70. I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die.
Uzodinma Iweala
#71. Me - not wanting to admit that I just let him use me again.
Him - not wanting to admit that it was more than just sex.
Both of us lying to ourselves.
Colleen Hoover
#72. November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of having to deal with unrequited love.
Axl Rose
#73. Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.
Mary Astell
#74. I'd been very certain about not wanting to do the acting thing because of my father. I thought I'd always have the father-son thing of 'He got you the part.'
Domhnall Gleeson
#75. I mean, not wanting to be flip about it, but even within a corporation, you get sort of cult-like behaviors sometimes.
Jane Poynter
#76. Even Catholic parishes today are not wanting for talent. But no serious singer or organist will get anywhere near the typical music program, at least if he wants to retain his self-respect.
Richard Morris
#77. We're stuck in fear and in not wanting to cross that most important bridge of understanding that we're more alike or not. We all cry, we all laugh.
Stevie Wonder
#78. A lot of people who do drama say comedy is the hardest thing, but, not wanting to sound like a bighead, comedy is easy for me, as I've always been fairly funny.
Nick Frost
#79. It's a big shift. I don't know quite how to explain it. Between wanting and not wanting, caring and not caring. Of course it's a lot more than that too. Shock and aura. Things are stronger and brighter and I feel on the edge of something inexpressible.
Donna Tartt
#80. I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.
Penelope Lively
#82. What keeps this boy going...is the intense feeling of not wanting to be alone.
Hotaru Odagiri
#83. Perhaps all miracles are just the immediate response of objective material reality to a pure, heart-felt thought of not wanting to inconvenience anyone. Maybe the Universe is serving the highest spiritual thought. Maybe the logic of magic is love.
Eve Jones
#85. As a woman of a certain age - and really, ever since I hit puberty and my baby-making parts were suddenly subject to public debate - I've been told over and over again that I will 'change my mind' about not wanting kids.
Jen Kirkman
#86. But that night I thought, in the simplest of terms, maybe love was not wanting to say goodbye.
Jeannine Allison
#87. The name is something we thought about for a long time, and we wanted it to be a girl's name, but we didn't want it to be 'the Jesses,' ... We were very conscious of not wanting to make it a twin thing, because we think that's really tacky.
Lisa Origliasso
#88. I made some flippant remark about not wanting my son to grow up with an American accent, and the next thing I knew, there were people in America suggesting I head back to Britain if I was unhappy at such a prospect.
Ashley Jensen
#89. Maybe that's the key to happiness - being sort of dumb, not wanting to know any of the answers.
William Styron
#90. I'd just like to be able to walk outside as everyone does and enjoy time with my friends, not feel bad for not wanting to take a picture.
Liam Payne
#91. The emotional question became why Susy had rejected me. I was interested in that shift, from actively wanting to actively not wanting.
Olivia Sudjic
#92. Yeah." He hesitated, as if not wanting to push. "I'd love to have a few days with you before school starts. Here or back on campus or wherever." "I'd like that," I said, with as much of a casual attitude as I could muster, but inside it was all Wagnerian opera.
Eli Easton
#93. My sister and I fought a lot when we were kids. I was the little bratty sister, and she would kind of walk away, not wanting to be associated with me.
Annette Bening
#94. Wanting it for its beauty is not wanting to inspect it: it is wanting to contemplate it - and that is something more than a search for information or an expression of appetite. Here is a want without a goal: a desire that cannot be fulfilled since there is nothing that would count as its fulfilment.
Roger Scruton
#95. I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.
Laurie Foos
#96. 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
#97. For the first time, I was glad that Finn had badgered me into buying the Aston, because the car purred into high gear with no visible effort and hugged the road better than a creepy old uncle at Christmas, not wanting to let go of his pretty young relatives.
Jennifer Estep
#98. Kay both did and didn't want to ask whose boathouse this was. What stopped her wasn't fear of the answer. It was fear of Michael not wanting to be asked.
Mark Winegardner
#99. Christianity also stands in opposition to intellectual, as well as physical, health. To doubt becomes sin. 'Faith means not wanting to know what it true' a description that strikes me as stunning and quite exact.
Robert Sheaffer
#100. I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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