Gayle Forman Quotes

It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]

The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.

It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.

Want is misery.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

I truly wish I could sing.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

We can better see what we don't have. The other man's grass is always greener and now we can actually go and visit his grass much more and feel the absence of green in our own lives.

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing.

I was always a 'grass is greener' kind of guy.

Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!

This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it, is intolerable.

Stress is caused by being 'here' but wanting to be 'there'.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing