Quotes About Wanting Something You Can't Have

#1. I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

Frank Ocean

#2. There is no worse flaw in man's character than that of wanting to belong.

David Adams Richards

#3. Letters
I've never sent.

This life
we're only renting.

Battered the world is -
bartered -
wander over it
the stars finding

us wanting.

Kevin Young

#4. The city has always been an embodiment of hope and a source of feeling guilt; a dream pursued, and found vain, wanting, and destructive.

Jonathan Raban

#5. I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.

Julie Walters

#6. Drinking isn't necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can't drink without thinking you're killing yourself.

Marguerite Duras

#7. The day after the Oscars, I flew back to London to film a television play for Anglia. It was a big mistake because you never really get acknowledged for wanting to work in England, as I did.

Ron Moody

#8. What would it be like to let go of wanting things to be other than they are?

Byron Katie

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

Martina Boone

#10. I can understand wanting to have a million dollars but once you get beyond that, I have to tell you, it's the same hamburger.

Bill Gates

#11. When the mind stops searching, when it stops wanting refuge, when it no longer goes in search of security, when it no longer craves more books and information, when it ignores even the memory of desire, only then will Love arrive within.

Samael Aun Weor

#12. Toronto is exploding with cyclists, with more and more people wanting to cycle and being turned off driving because of the incredible congestion. Biking is a much more efficient way of getting around, and you get there faster.

Dan Hill

#13. Not wanting to give everyone in your life one of your kidneys is not the same thing as hoping they die of kidney failure.

Mallory Ortberg

#14. You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly.

Shirley Jackson

#15. To me, I think it's this thing of everyone wanting to make Jesus the Son of God and Jesus the only way to God that is the thing that no longer makes me want to be a Christian.

Woody Harrelson

#16. And I know -I just know- you can remind me what it feels like to have someone look at me and love me with wanting me to be something else.

Amy Reed

#17. You think it can't get worse than wanting someone and not having them, but it can. You can want someone, have them, and want them more. Still. Always. You can never get enough.

Michelle Hodkin

#18. Think of it like this. If you are sad because you can't have something you want - maybe a book or a toy - you can do one of two things: you can do your best to get it, or you can stop wanting it. Either way, if you succeed, you won't be sad any more.

E.H. Gombrich

#19. Can I ask you something?" He placed the chain around her neck.
She nodded.
"Have you ever wanted something really badly that you know you shouldn't have, yet you can't stop yourself from wanting it?

Kait Ballenger

#20. It wasn't as if she'd thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn't always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want.

Shannon Celebi

#21. I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.

Gil Scott-Heron

#22. And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I've served ye well.

Diana Gabaldon

#23. I think one of the big issues with, you know, people who have strong faith in addition to competing is that conflict between accepting things the way they are, and wanting to compete and get better, and at what point are you in the right balance.

Tom Lehman

#24. I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America ... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.

Amiri Baraka

#25. Everyone wanted what she couldn't have.

Richelle Mead

#26. 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

#27. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out - but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity. [ 1 John 2:17 MSG

Max Lucado

#28. Wanting to be happy is not stupid.

Lauren DeStefano

#29. The young women seem to think that they can only go out with or marry a man who is superior to them. The problem there is that they are wanting to be defeated, as opposed to finding a partner.

Gloria Steinem

#30. I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air.

Audrey Niffenegger

#31. Wanting to be a rock star, I get it. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, dude! The freedom!'

Orlando Bloom

#32. There was something fundamentally embarrassing about being a young woman ... [the] embarrassment of wanting to be more assured, more substantive, more whole, of moving to tap resources that simply weren't there.

Michelle Orange

#33. In the end, everything is found to be wanting.

Frank Lentricchia

#34. It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to have been born, grateful for life, and I couldn't imagine not wanting to pass on life to someone else.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#35. I can think back to being four or five and not wanting to sit at the kids' table because I thought it was demeaning. I was this ridiculous little kid.

Lenny Abrahamson

#36. In always wanting to be comfortable, you become lazy.
In always wanting perfection, you become angry.
In always wanting to be rich, you become greedy.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

#37. Those wanting to improve democracy in their countries should not wait for permission.

Bulent Ecevit

#38. After all, true power was the ability to manipulate others into wanting to do what you wanted them to do.

Marissa Honeycutt

#39. You can love someone without wanting to be with them. Just like you can want to be with someone before you love them.

Jamie McGuire

#40. None of my actions have ever sort of been motored by the search for a husband or wondering if I was going to have a family someday or wanting to live in a really great house or thinking it would be really great to have a diamond.

Lena Dunham