Best 240 quotes in «desperation quotes» category

The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.

The young doe, Marena, said, "In this very hour many of us are going to die. Perhaps I shall be one of them.

They say "the taste of the pudding is in the eating," but that doesn't apply to "a square peg in a round hole". If the peg is driven by hunger to give and desire to fill, and the hole on the other hand is moved by thirst to receive and purpose to fulfil, then a deep knowledge of the reason for existence, a mutual understanding of roles, and the wisdom to effectively carry out those roles are very key, if we must have a round peg in a round hole, or a square peg in a square hole. But then again, who cares about "shape" in desperation?!

Things are never as they seem. A person. A Mark. A statement. They are always deeper than we perceive, like walking in the ocean and suddenly dipping under the surface because the bottom has disappeared beneath your feet. The water appears shallow until you are suddenly flailing around beneath the surface, desperately searching for stable ground once again.

THIS IS WHY He will never be given to wonder much if he was the mouth for some cruel force that said it. But if he were (this will comfort her) less than one moment out of millions had he meant it. So many years and so many turns they had swerved around the subject. And he will swear for many more the kitchen and everything in it vanished -- the oak table, their guests, the refrigerator door he had been surely propped against-- all changed to rusted ironwork and ash except in the center in her linen caftan: she was not touched. He remembers the silence before he spoke and her nodding a little, as if in the meat of this gray waste here was the signal for him to speak what they had long agreed, what somewhere they had prepared together. And this one moment in the desert of ash stretches into forever. They had been having a dinner party. She had been lonely. A friend asked her almost joking if she had ever felt really crazy, and when she started to unwind her answer in long, lovely sentences like scarves within her he saw this was the way they could no longer talk together. And that is when he said it, in front of the guests, because he couldn't bear to hear her. And this is why the guests have left and she screams as he comes near her.

To desperation,” he said, and raised his glass. She raised hers as well, toward the altar. “And to bleeding hearts,” she added, and they drank.

To love, to live, to feel so much that your world keeps spinning, faster and faster, in that wonderful, chaotic mess of humanity that you’d so hastily give up. Immortality is overrated. It is nothing but the ability to live through it all and not experience a single thing, to eat everything without tasting it at all." Isak’s eyes shone with a desperate need. He wanted, more than anything it seemed, to be like me, when all I wanted was to be like him.

Tragedy is a disaster; but desperation after that tragedy is a much greater disaster!

We formed an impromptu circle just so we could look at each other and memorize faces. We hardly noticed the waiting officials. We hardly noticed anything but our little family whose ties weren’t loosening at all. In fact, this impending separation only seemed to be binding us together with a double overhand knot, hard to untie and unfailing.

We had firsthand witnessed the ethereal evil of crushing hope just when it had peaked—like an open door, visible to you as you approach it from miles away, just closing on you when you have only two more yards to go.

To a life of quiet desperation... and not leading it.

To whomever is writing this book, what do you want from me? I need to know my calling. Why was I chosen? Why not Lee? Why not Susan March? Why me? What is my purpose? Please let it be more than to destroy a life and embarrass another. I need to know. I am suffering. You are a constant headache. Anywhere I go, I can hear you, I can feel you. I want to be like the others, ignorant of this.

Was it too much to expect a future?

We're not going to make it," I said. The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me.

When all seems hopeless, cross your fingers and stick with the secular prayer.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

When there is silence, Give your voice. When there is darkness, Shine your light. When there is desperation, Offer hope.

When your heart's been cut out, how's it going to feel knowing that you're the one who wielded the knife?

When the waterholes were dry, people sought to drink at the mirage.

Within her simple, terrified mind, swift calculations of distance and speed were at work, and her face advertised the disappointing results.

You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

You can’t separate desperate politicians from violence and trouble.

You drive me back down my desperation—that unclouded incurable never forgotten evil growing inside my life.

You need to wake up and realize that you deserve more, and there is more waiting for you out there. Stop settling; it only tarnishes and corrodes your soul.

You'll get, with faith and hope what you think can be yours.

You might even ask, 'Who is this guy to be telling me how to live my life?' And my answer is simple. I’m the guy that is figuring it out just like you. I can’t guarantee that I’m ahead of you in the race - but I do feel it’s my responsibility to help people get into the race, and to stay on track in the race. I know I don’t have it all together. I know that I’m not an expert. I know that I’m not perfect. But I can’t sit by and let men live 'lives of quiet desperation.' (To quote Thoreau) Let’s do this together. Take the flint. Take the steel. Strike. And we will reignite our lives together.

Your arms ache to hold someone -- you move in slow motion from one hug to the next so you won't jostle the warm feeling off your shoulders before the next hug comes your way. Your heart feels hollow -- that emptiness screams like an addiction to be filled even if it means doing hurtful, selfish things to get a fix. "I understand," I tell him. "Because I've been lonely, too.

You're desperate, and so am I,' I said. 'Desperate people make stupid decisions all the time.'" P244

You're gone and you left me. My heart has dissipated. The only thing I can feel is the blood rushing through my veins and the strings that hold my fragile heart together.

You scream it in everything you do. You’re holding on to what happened because you think that’s all you have.” “It is all I have.” “Find more

Beware of driving men to desperation. Even a cornered rat is dangerous.

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.

You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.

But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?

Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?

Despair makes victims sometimes victors.

Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain.

Desperation is like a spilled drink; even if it's delicious, no one will get near it. Cultivate an aura of glamorous unapproachability.

Desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.

Economy, speed, nervousness, and desperation produce the final wasteful, semi-incoherent movies we see.

Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

How could you tell if your instincts were just hope in disguise, and if your hope was really desperation parading as possibility?

Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.

I could definitely empathize with the character, with the feelings of helplessness - if only the desperation and the feeling of isolation.

If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.

I cling to my memories of glorious desperation.

I believe that everyone has it in them to kill another person. In desperation, or hatred, or at least to defend themselves.

If one is desperate for love, I suggest looking at one's friends and family and see if love is all around. If not, get a new set of friends, a new family.

I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.