Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced - because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.

I mean, I'm not unhappy, but there's still so much I want to do.

I'm actually not a particularly negative person, but I feel like most things are better when they're not actualized. The motivation that comes from wanting something is so much more driving of people than actually getting it.

When you've been living in hope for a long time as I have, suddenly you realize that certainty is far more desirable than hope.

It is the want that creates the body.

We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming.

Desire creates its own object.

Broch is an inspiration to us, not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain.

Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

I have three things I really, really want to do. I want to do aerial trapeze, I want to do martial arts, and I want to learn Russian. And, because of my life, I'm not able to do any of these.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

No star is ever lost we once have seen, we always may be what we might have been.

It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.

I wish I had had a great disappointment, a real one.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything.

Everything you can imagine is real.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Every day I realized I would not be a star.

Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.