Quotes on Want

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.

Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive.

For things to change you need to change. For things to get better you need to get better. The good news is you can change, you can get better and you can start right where you are at and you can go as far as you want to go.

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.

If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.

When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.

Addiction is when you can't get enough of what you don't want any more.

That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

I’m not sad, but the boys who are looking for sad girls always find me. I’m not a girl anymore and I’m not sad anymore. You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘Wow, isn't he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.

Botox should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen. Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?

Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.