George Pelecanos Quotes

When it comes to power as it functions between humans, it all comes down to desire. If you know what someone wants, you can control them. It is as simple as that. And the reverse is also true: If you have control over your own desires, no one will ever own you. As humans, we are plagued with desire - it consumes us, it fuels us, it destroys us.

One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.

All men desire by nature to know.

In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

As it is, lovers of inquiry must follow their beloved wherever it may lead.

When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't.

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species.

He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.

This desire of knowledge and the wonder which it hopes to satisfy are the driving power behind all the changes that we, with careless, question-begging inference, call progress.

Man by Nature desires to know.

I do what I do because my favorite thing is to learn.

Of all the things we've learned, we still haven't learned where did this desire to want to know come from?

The most successful scientists are not the most talented. But they are the ones who are impelled by curiosity. They've got to know what the answer is

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.

He's not the relationship kind or so I hear." "And do you want a relationship?" I asked her. "No." She laughed, dabbing her fry. "But I have a feeling with someone like him, you get one taste and you will always want more." "Sort of like crack?" Jacob suggested. "Or Cheetos," Brit supplied.

The average are addicted to leisure. The exceptional are obsessed with learning.

Curiosity kills itself; and love is only curiosity, as is proved by its end.

If I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us.

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man.

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.