Desperate Quotes - Page 14

• despite all our desperate, eternal attempts to separate, contain and mend, categories always leak.

  Trinh T. Minh-ha

  Leaks, Categories, Despite

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• The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Grief, Men, Speech

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

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• If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

  Wilfred Owen

  Dream, Children, Cancer

  "Dulce et Decorum Est" l. 21 (written 1918) See Horace 20

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• She would buy magic every day of the week. Love me, that face said. I'm so lonely, so desperate. I'll give you whatever you want.

  Janet Fitch

  Lonely, Giving, Magic

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.96, Hachette UK

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• Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!

  Cornelia Funke

  Crush, Writing, Hands

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• In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Love, Heartbreak, Character

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.20, A&C Black

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• That isn't a desperate act. That's a PLAN.

  James A. Owen

  Plans

  James A. Owen (2015). “Dawn of the Dragons: Here, There Be Dragons; The Search for the Red Dragon”, p.500, Simon and Schuster

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• It was sad, like those businessmen who came to work in serious clothes but wore colorful ties in a mad, desperate attempt to show there was a free spirit in there somewhere.

  Terry Pratchett

  Clothes, Ties, Mad

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• And I suppose tapes are a desperate attempt to steal something from Death's suitcase.

  Mitch Albom

  Tape, Suitcases, Stealing

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• Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Daughter, Art

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.222, Penguin

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• She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

  Charles Bukowski

  Beautiful, Way, Enough

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• Desperate times call for desperate measures. That's a saying, or a bit of advice, or a catchprase, or a string of words used to confuse people less intelligent than you. In any case, it means: Life is tough, so you'd better fight hard-or something like that.

  Obert Skye

  Mean, Fighting, Intelligent

  Obert Skye, Ben Sowards (2007). “The Whispered Secret”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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• The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

  Richard Yates

  Running, Grief, Night

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• Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Memories, Struggle

  Herbert Marcuse (1978). “The aesthetic dimension: toward a critique of Marxist aesthetics”, Beacon Pr

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• You don't dare think whole even to yourself the entirety of a dear hope or wish let alone a desperate one else you yourself have doomed it.

  William Faulkner

  Thinking, Wish, Dare

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• All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

  J. G. Ballard

  Past, Egypt, Museums

  "The Atrocity Exhibition". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1970.

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• I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don't know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Experts, Needs, Answers

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.16, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Believe me, I know all about bottle acoustics. I spent much of the sixth century in an old sesame oil jar, corked with wax, bobbing about in the Red Sea. No one heard my hollers. In the end an old fisherman set me free, by which time I was desperate enough to grant him several wishes. I erupted out in the form of a smoking giant, did a few lightning bolts, and bent to ask him his desire. Poor old boy had dropped dead of a heart attack. There should be a moral there, but for the life of me I can't see one.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Believe, Heart, Boys

  "Ptolemy's Gate". Book by Jonathan Stroud, September, 2005.

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• Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.

  Dean Koontz

  Pieces, Working It, Humans

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• There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Sight, Needs, Way

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• She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Struggle, Might, Drowning

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice.

  Anne Holm

  Lonely, Eye, Men

  Anne Holm (1990). “North to Freedom”, Odyssey Classics

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• Pain! Deep, tearing, throbbing, needle-sharp, hammer-blunt pain – ripping through his body and through his mind, twisting deep in his guts and slicing at his skin with razors and broken glass. Oskan wanted to scream, but his vocal cords had burned away. He was desperate for water and he could hear it dripping all around him, but his charred tongue found nothing in his mouth but blisters and scorched flesh. For hours he lay on the ropes of the low bed, unable to move, the pressure of the hemp on his destroyed skin sending new agonies deep into his body.

  Stuart Hill

  Pain, Moving, Glasses

  Stuart Hill (2011). “The Icemark Chronicles #1: Cry of the Icemark”, p.352, Scholastic Inc.

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• I had never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love - plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing - turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness. Neither could James. He understood. In such situations, you do one of two things - you either walk away and deny yourself, or you do sneaky things to get what you need. You attend weddings, you go for walks. You say, yes. Yes, you're my best friend, too.

  Elizabeth McCracken

  Girl, Unrequited Love, Boys

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• They enveloped each other within the folds of their thoughts, holding each other with an intimacy no physical embrace could replicate, allowing their identities to merge once again. Their greatest comfort was a simple one: they were no longer alone. To know that you were with the one who cared for you, and who understood every fiber of your being, and who would not abandon you even in the most desperate of circumstances, that was the most precious relationship a person could have, and they both cherished it.

  Christopher Paolini

  Simple, Identity, Fiber

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