Best 240 quotes in «desperation quotes» category

He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon.

He sent up another silent prayer to wherever desperate prayers go and took the first step toward what he hoped would be salvation.

He stood over her for as long as he could endure the cold, long enough for the boy tending the dead to pass twice on fingertips and toes. The boy's self-appointed mission was to keep all of their eyes closed, the dead. Otherwise he couldn't sleep, the boy. But he never did anyway, as far as the Agent could tell. Any hour, there he'd be, scuttling from body to body under his calf robe. Many nights when the Agent locked his door, it wasn't to keep the Piegan from stealing his tins and blankets, but to keep the boy's hands from covering his own eyes.

He was a powerful man; he had powerful contacts, and two hidden office levels that, although weren't dungeons, could be used for anything his desperate mind set out to do.

He wanted to go home to the place that he hated.

He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong. All I say is, may neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may do like things.

Hope is an enthusiastic assurance.

Hope is sometimes a fickle thing, my dear.” The endearment felt painful when spoken as part of such a heartbreaking conversation. “We hang on to it because we need to, even when there really is no point.

How about a favor?” I asked impulsively –foolishly. Oh, but how I would regret these words. I was sure about that. But nothing else came to mind, and to regret it, I still had to live.

How can I even think of such a fate . . . Better to commit murder.

How horrible to think what we may wish for, lay in anguish for, may be within our reach but we are unable to see them.

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.

I believe in love and I believe that a healthy love stems from love for oneself, so it is never desperate, even in the worst event, in which the other leaves us sorry to die in the fullness of love, a true feeling turns that into energy to go forward with joy and even more strength than before. True love leaves no room for despair, true love is beyond hope.

I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say.

I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in. We are desperate with our dreams. What - oh, what - does that say?

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to 'LIllustration. Something desperate, you know." Zagreus smiled. "You're a poor man, Mersault. That explains half of your disgust. And the other half you owe to your own submission to poverty.

I didn't forget you. I'm just desperate to move on.

I don't have anything to give you, except to show you a way to better yourself.

If the affluent cannot afford hope, you cannot expect the destitute to pay for desperation.

I had nothing to prove and everything to lose. But it didn’t take love to sacrifice something of yourself for someone else. It just took desperation.

If the sea could speak, he thought blindly, it would be screaming at him

If you were mine, I'd never leave you, Prudence. I couldn't.

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter.

I just want to know if I can go to Heaven. That's all I want in life, salvation in the next.

I kept a record of my periods, and would ask for the next meeting to be on the full moon, in my apartment. Most of them responded with a nervous negative, and the reason wasn't that they considered my proposition peculiar; it was because I blurted it out as if I was playing Russian roulette. And because of my bulging red-faced blondeness, my coming-apart-at-the-seams ways of speaking, and a pair of eyes whose futile, terrifying shipwreck said it all.

I know what it's like to desperately need help, and what I think is it would feel really good to be on the other side, to be able to give help to people who need it, desperately or otherwise.

I know the hard ground and the taste of the salt water I’m made of and the way even getting out of bed feels impossible some days. I know how some moments there’s not even enough air. I know the desperate and the bargains you want to make with the universe and every last prayer you’ve prayed to gods you don’t even believe in. But stupid? No, love. Not stupid. Not you. You are infinitely, impossibly, beautifully human.

In the better light of the living room he noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.

I'll go this minute!' Of course, I remained.

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor.

I think our last kiss was meant to be quick and chaste, but after the first touch of his lips fire leaped up and roared through my belly. My fingers yanked him close, digging into his back, and his arms crushed me to him as if wanting to meld us together. I knotted my fingers in his hair and bit down on his bottom lip, making him groan. His lips parted, and my tongue swept in to dance with his. There was nothing sweet or gentle in our last kiss; it was filled with sorrow and desperation, of the bitter knowledge that we could've had something perfect, but it just wasn't meant to be.

In troubled times one wishes for a sound sleep more than usual, but, realizing its amplified importance, sleep smugly impedes all attempts to woo it.

I swung my hips around like I unscrewed at the waist.

I want to feel embarrassed by my desperation but I’m too busy feeling desperate.

It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?

I turned back looking far away not making contact with anyone and I paced to my room with tears in my eyes, solitude in my heart and nuisance in my mind. I locked my door, rested in bed and slept while still desperate.

I wake abruptly, my breath jagged and heart racing, my mouth stale, and I know immediately that's it. I'm awake. The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be.

It's not your enemies who condemn you to solitude, it's your friends

it was times like these when a man in a desperate situation must take whatever madness is offered to escape the darker madness in which he finds himself trapped.

I was ambitious and desperate to direct my first film, so I capitulated and blew it. Never again. Never fucking again.

I wasn’t old enough to remember the day Daddy sent her there. The way he told it, she was stealing crank and spent most of her time climbing around the peter tree. So he sent her to this place. Loved her too much to give her nothing, but giving her anything at all squared things so he’d never have to love her again.

I was shaking so hard, I could barely get the door unlocked. I just got the door shut behind me when I sank to my knees and fell apart. I cried so hard I was nearly convulsing. I had never felt such raw emotions in my life. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it to pieces. I curled into a ball on the floor and tried desperately to disappear. But no matter how small I got, I was still here. I still existed. And for a short while, I thought I had mattered to someone. I guess I was wrong. I mattered to no one.

I was wrong, Gabby, and I'll apologize for it forever if you want me to. But the truth is I couldn't face you. If I came to you and you sent me away, if I knew for certain that you didn't want me anymore...God in heaven, Gabriella Waverly, I've never been so bloody afraid of a lass before.

I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.

Women are dangerous, they stop at nothing and they never let go.

Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love." He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says.

Loneliness and desperation are only possible when we have lost touch with our beauty within.

Love me. You have destroyed everything! But if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me.

Marena looked at all of them out of her big, calm, shining eyes. "Love is no nonsense," she said. "It has to come.