36 Quotes About Wanting

In the intricate tapestry of human emotions, few are as universally experienced yet uniquely personal as the feeling of wanting. It’s a sensation that can drive us to achieve great heights, inspire change, and even transform our perspectives. Whether it’s a longing for love, success, adventure, or inner peace, wanting shapes our desires and fuels our journeys. To capture the essence of this powerful emotion, we’ve curated a collection of the top 36 quotes about wanting. These quotes, drawn from a diverse array of voices and contexts, offer profound insights and reflections that resonate deeply with our shared human experience. Dive in and let these words inspire your own aspirations and yearnings.

1. “He just wanted to stand close to her, touch her hair that was white as glacier milk...” - Janet Fitch

2. “I emitted some civetlike female stink, a distinct perfume of sexual wanting, that he had followed to find me here in the dark.” - Janet Fitch

3. “Everybody will get their wants, when they heartily want.” - Santosh Kalwar

4. “Youngsters want to change world. Elders want to enjoy their works.The entrepreneur sells anything needed by both to win their desires.” - Toba Beta

5. “Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it.” - Isobelle Carmody

6. “Alice's eyes fell to the bundle she carried. But she only said, 'People from the other side of the mirror want to know who and where and why and what is the name. They have to know everything. They are always gnawing at things and at one another.''It's good to want to know things,' Jack said defensively.'It is? What happens when there is no answer?' she sneered. 'Wanting-to-know is always biting at you. Biting and itching. You want to much. Go back to your own world. You don't belong here” - Isobelle Carmody

7. “This praise, though far from fulsome, gave me pleasure and that is to my shame. But there was something in him, some power of spirit, that made me want to please him. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, it was no more than the intensity of his wish. Men are distinguished by the power of their wanting. What this one wanted became his province and his meal, he governed it and fed on it from the first moment of desire. Besides, with the perversity of our nature, being tested had made me more desire to succeed, though knowing the enterprise to be sinful.” - Barry Unsworth

8. “There are words in the soul of a newborn baby, wanting and waiting to be written.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

9. “And i can't get you out of my head,how in the world will i beginto let you walk right out my lifeand blow my heart away?” - Toni Braxton

10. “If I lay hereIf I just lay herewould you lie with me and just forget the world?” - Snow Patrol

11. “The problem for a lot of people is that they don't really know what they want. They have vague desire: to 'do something creative' or to earn more money or 'to be free', but they can't really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift from one thing to another, enjoying some moments and hating others, but never really finding fulfillment or success. (..)This is why it's hard to lead a successful life (whatever that means to you) when you don't know what you want.” - John C. Parkin

12. “Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us.” - Janet Fitch

13. “I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.” - Jamie Ford

14. “Maybe it was because I didn't want to look at my life and see what is missing. Once you identify what you lack, then it's all you see anymore. Wanting something I couldn't have would only lead to unhappiness, so I tried to be content with what I had.” - Lisa Mangum

15. “It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them.” - Maggie Stiefvater

16. “Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.” - Heather O'Neill

17. “In the end, everything is found to be wanting.” - Frank Lentricchia

18. “Always wanting another man than your own.” - Thomas Hardy

19. “But all these were things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.” - Cassandra Clare

20. “Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it.” - Gary Cox

21. “According lecture, entire effort United States to incite desire, inflict want, inspire demand.” - Chuck Palahniuk

22. “I didn't think he was in love with me and I had no idea what I felt for him, but he wanted me, and maybe that was enough.” - Leigh Bardugo

23. “Everything is easier said than done. Wanting something is easy. Saying something is easy. The challenge and the reward are in the doing.” - Steve Maraboli

24. “The tourists always seem to want something. On Thisby, it's less about wanting, and more about being." I wonder after I say it if he'll think I sound like have no drive or ambition.” - Maggie Stiefvater

25. “No misery compares to staring at a clear night's sky with arms stretched toward a coveted star, wishing on what is forever out of reach.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

26. “I know what it is to want something that could destroy you.” - Nenia Campbell

27. “Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.” - Laura Lippman

28. “Contentment comes from wanting what we need, not needing what we want.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

29. “All I ever wanted from you was to know that I was wanted by you.  That would have changed everything.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

30. “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

31. “Everyone wanted what she couldn't have.” - Richelle Mead

32. “Hell, a man can lie there and want something so bad and be so full of wanting it he just plain forgets what it is he wants. Just like when you are a boy and the sap first rises and you think you will go crazy some night wanting something and you want it so bad and get so near sick wanting it you near forget what it is.” - Robert Penn Warren

33. “He isn't interested in simple. He wants what he wants. No matter how much trouble she is and no matter whether he even understands it himself.” - Deanna Raybourn

34. “I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.” - Stanley Kubrick

35. “How can you possibly do everything you want to do in life if you start doing a bunch of things twice?” - Lorii Myers

36. “You asked what I wanted and I'm not going to lie to you. What I want most is the naked truth. I want to strip away every stubborn layer until you're bared to me. And then I'm going to show you how to love right.” - Nadège Richards