You know what I think? I think that if a young woman doesn't engage in the act of occasionally wishing on a star or a flower or a birthday cake full of candles, then we're forfeiting one of the sweetest whimsies of our youth.

Genius never desires what does not exist.

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

Don't let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours.

Success will ameliorate all the years of your sadness.

Desire had a way of making a person oddly courageous.

and want can be a hundred times stronger than need, and a thousand times stronger than common sense. She

If she felt my gaze upon her, I assume she was accustomed to being stared at, just as I was used to wanting what I could not have.

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear?

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

If you're single and you want to get married, put an empty photo album on your table. That's where you're going to put your wedding photos. When you see it, you're moving toward it.

Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you really want something, try to want it a little less.