We’ve collected the best Wanted Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Sushant Singh Rajput, Madonna Ciccone, Billy Connolly, Noah Schnapp, Jenny Holzer. Use them as an inspiration.
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I really saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella. I think that’s when I really thought about how I wanted to do something else and get away from all that.
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I went to art school in Chicago for a year at Columbia College. I had this whole master plan of getting into sustainable development and green architecture and construction, so I wanted to go to business school and then get my masters in construction and development.
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When I heard the royal family wanted to have me perform in celebration of Prince William‘s marriage, I knew I had to give them a little something. ‘Wet‘ is the perfect anthem for Prince William or any playa to get the club smokin’.
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I wanted to be a professional dancer my whole life.
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My father has been serious with me because he wanted me to have the best opportunities to do well. I think that has been a huge benefit for me coming from a small country like Norway.
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When I found out that there was eight Presidents before George Washington, I wanted to smack somebody.
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I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.
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I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental – in fact I wanted faith.
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I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.
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I didn’t tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn’t happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.
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I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo.
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I really didn’t feel challenged anymore. I wanted to learn something and be excited again… While it can be a family – that environment is actually a family – in the sense that also you sometimes hate each other, you can’t stand being around each other and grudges are held… I was getting cranky on ‘Criminal Minds.’
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I never really had that father figure to look up to. I think that’s the reason I’m so ambitious. I felt like I wasn’t appreciated as a child so I wanted to prove my worth as an adult, as an actor.
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Once people put that title on me as one of the better shooters, I just wanted to be the best shooter. That’s what I feel like I was out to prove.
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You have to love what you do. And in order to do that, you have to search your soul to find out what it is that you really are about. And then when you find it, if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to do what it is that you love, it becomes easy. I’m blessed that I ended up doing exactly what I wanted to do.
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I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.
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The biggest misconception people have about me is that when they see how young I am, they think, ‘Oh, this guy must have always wanted to be in politics; his parents must have been politically connected.’ I’m a finance major and always intended to go into business.
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I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.
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The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it’s nothing new.
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I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.
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I came to feel an artist might use anything – a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol – t say what he wanted to say.
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I’ve always wanted to be in journalism. I even started a course at Loughborough doing media studies. I like all sports, and I am keen on writing. But I thought that while I was still young, I ought to make a real go of it at badminton. So I have put all my focus on playing sport instead of writing about it.
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I never said I wanted to be around for a long time. I always said I wanted to be here for a good time.
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I grew up in Connecticut – it was really charming, but when I was younger, all I wanted was to get out.
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I’m from the south side of Nigeria, a place called Port Harcourt City… No one ever makes it out of there. I wanted to put it on the map.
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I’ll die before I’m 25, and when I do I’ll have lived the way I wanted to.
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I always wanted to be a basketball player.
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The only time I waste is time I spend doing something that, in my gut, I know I shouldn’t. If I choose to spend time playing video games or sleeping in, then it’s time well spent, because I chose to do it. I did it for a reason – to relax, to decompress or to feel good, and that was what I wanted to do.
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What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.
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Make more than the guys you thought you wanted to be with.
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I came from a happy family with loving parents, so my associations with marriage and children were all happy, positive things that brought me comfort as a child, which I wanted in my life.
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I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.
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I’ve always wanted to make a music video with skating and different imagery, something very artistic.
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I knew I wanted to do music, but leaving such a successful career one would think I’d kind of shot myself in the foot. I knew I made the right decision, and at the end of the day it’s up to me to get where I want to go, but it’s a lot to take on.
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I wanted to write a novel where the meaning is in the story and characters and the subliminal, in the shades and nuances. It’s exciting to develop that as a writer.
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I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.
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I never knew what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.
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When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.
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When I turned 50, I asked some of my girlfriends, all actresses of the same age, ‘What are we going to do now?’ I wanted to go live somewhere for a while, learn archaeology, or take part in healing the world on some level. I wanted to dig deep and say, ‘Who am I now? What do I have to offer? What do I have to learn?’
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I wanted to have more time to play and reflect, but I find retirement more stressful than having a nice, steady job because I have to make decisions about where I want to be.
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The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.
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I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop.
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I got married because I wanted to do something that was more than I understood, because my feelings were more than I understood.
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Don’t get me wrong: school is good and all, but school is way too slow for me. Like, super slow. So I didn’t want to go. I wanted to learn on my own with real life experiences.
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I wanted to show the world, and myself too, what I can do. I came up in the world of Philadelphia soul, but I’m fluent in a lot of languages musically and I like working with different people from different generations.
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‘The Beatles‘ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
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If you can believe it, Hollywood wanted to change my birthdate. I was born after Valentine’s Day, so they wanted to change it to February 14. A Latin lover should be born on Valentine’s Day. I said no.
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I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.
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I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don’t.
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I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
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There was one film that I really wanted. This was a long time ago; it was a film called ‘Fracture.’ Ryan Gosling ended up doing it with Anthony Hopkins. It wasn’t a giant box-office success, but I really enjoyed the script, and I enjoyed the character. I got pretty close and was kind of disappointed it didn’t go my way.
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I always wanted to be a leading man!
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I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.
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It wasn’t like I wanted to be the next Marc Andreessen, but it would be cool to be in the same place.
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My father came from a very poor background, but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn’t want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had, a better shot at a better life.
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I didn’t want a pickup with mud tires. I wanted an old blazer with as many speakers in the back as I could afford. I would even steal them out of my brother’s car and pack them in there. I remember sitting in a parking lot and turning my radio up and walking down the street to see how far you could feel it.
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My mother didn’t want me to be in fashion. She was in the fashion business, so was my brother, and she thought it was too crazy for me. She wanted me to be married with children, to be independent, yes, but not to have a crazy life.
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I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.
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It’s the first time I have returned to my roots – like going back to be a trio. The fans really wanted me to go back on stage and do the Supremes music, so I went about trying to make it happen. We’ll go on tour in the summer.
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Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That’s what I wanted to prove.
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I really wanted to escape from that little girl. But it seems to me that the picture didn’t let me go.
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I come from a family of business people, but I had the idea I wanted to become an artist.
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Where I come from, all of us wanted to be footballers. We played all the time; that’s all we did at school or wherever until it went dark and you couldn’t see the ball.
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I never said I wanted a ‘happy’ life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.
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I decided I wanted to be a lawyer when I was 11 years of age.
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I was just making music in my bedroom. I never wanted to be onstage.
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I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?
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I just wanted to be a performer. I was ambitious. I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t act. I could dance a little. So what was there left for me to do? Television presenter. That was it.
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People say ‘dream big,’ that’s kind of one of those motivational sayings, but I would dream hard, meaning I just wanted it so badly, I could feel it.
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It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‘Marathon‘ or ‘All Money’ or ‘Crenshaw’ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.
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Every time I bought someone’s album, it was about the connection. I was loving everything, from their raps to their style. I wanted to meet them.
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I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.
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I wanted to be a part of WWE and part of NXT first, as, if I went to ‘Raw’ or ‘SmackDown’ right away, I would always wonder what NXT would have been like.
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I really do believe that was what I was put on this planet to do: to give to people and, through my performances, show them another world – in the case of ’24,’ to show them what a politician, black or white, should be. Basically, I wanted to be a service to others.
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Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
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What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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I’ve always wanted to be someone with credibility, and I want my food to speak for myself.
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I’ve always been a guy who’s pretty supportive, its just my nature, so I came in to the situation with the attitude that I wanted to support Johnny and make it work.
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I just wanted to have a private life.
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When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.
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What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
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I wanted to be a boy when I was young because boys got to do all the good stuff. So I became very aggressive and very competitive at a young age.
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Overcoming challenges by learning something in a game is a very rewarding feeling, and that’s what I wanted to prioritise in ‘Dark Souls’ and ‘Demon‘s Souls.’
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In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say.
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I’ve long wanted to introduce children to the wonder of the arts.
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I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.
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There were a lot of things that my parents could not do or afford. And when they put all that dreams into me and when I could not fulfill them, I felt very disappointed. And that was the only reason I wanted to dance with an artificial leg.
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All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know, to be loved.
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My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. But I don’t think I would have been very happy. I’d be in front of the jury singing.
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I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
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My dad, he worked rebar, an ironworker. Watching my pops get up every single morning, going into work, working hard – I think that really made me want to work that hard, wanted to make me get up early and go for a run or get a lift in or get some extra hitting in and really try to better myself every day.
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I’ve often wondered about people that come to the profession late in life. I’ve wanted to be an actor since the first grade. I watched a play being performed by the third grade class, and it was… magic.
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I started playing guitar when I was 12 and probably from that age knew that I wanted to make music and make my own music. Playing with other bands like the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens was more like an apprenticeship for me than anything.
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I always wanted to be honest with myself and to those who have had faith in me.
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I was skating with friends in my neighborhood, and then eventually I was invited to go to the skate park with one of them. When I saw people flying all around – literally flying in and out of bowls – that is when I knew I wanted to do it. I wanted to figure out how I could get there and how I could fly.
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Since I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a talk show host.
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I wanted pretty pictures of older women – women who are trying too hard but succeeding – pulling off an extreme look. What I didn’t know would creep into the portraits was a vulnerability behind the strong facade that most of them wear.
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2017 was crazy when I made the ‘Freshman‘ cover ’cause I looked up to it, and I really wanted to be in it. It was motivation for me after that: I kept on going, and I grinded.
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I wanted to sail when I was in grammar school and well remember memorizing the names of the sails from the Merriam-Webster’s ponderous dictionary in the library. Now I am actually at sea – as a passenger, of course, but at sea nevertheless – and bound for Ecuador.
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I believe that I’m one of the best in the world at what I do, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.
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Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
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You know the AME Church has a history of empowering black people and having an international outlook. So it was the women of the church who began to give Sarah Breedlove an image of herself as something other than an illiterate washerwoman, and she wanted to make her life better, and her daughter‘s life better.
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I went through a long period where I was afraid of doing things I wanted to do, and you get your courage back, which is what’s important.
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I got into retailing because I wanted a real job.
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Our target customers are people in their 20s. Old people wanted to be 21 again, and young people wanted to be 21 forever.
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I never wanted to be a statistic. I never wanted to be that cat who tried and never made it.
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In the ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,’ I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn’t descending an equally real staircase.
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I always wanted what Mom and Dad had.
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There’s something to be said for any boy growing up among lots of other boys who like to play basketball and football, while all I wanted to do was put on musicals. Mentally, I was always in my own world.
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I just decided I wanted to become someone else… So I became someone else.
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Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose.
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When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?
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Of Adam and Eve: They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it.
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Coming to Australia, it was just really magical for me. It just had the wow factor of a different sort of place and, more so, just being with a family that wanted to love me and to have me, because I knew back then, before coming to Australia, there was no way of getting back home or finding my real family.
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I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‘sexy,’ even before I knew what the word was.
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Everyone has their own battles, people feel bad all the time for different reasons. For me it was feeling depressed, anxious and out of place. But I wanted to give people something that could sit with them on their own personal level.
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I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.
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Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.
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A year or so ago I went through all the people in my life and asked myself: does this person inspire me, genuinely love me and support me unconditionally? I wanted nothing but positive influences in my life.
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He was so confident. But underneath that, behind the scenes, I knew Michael Jordan was a country kid from North Carolina, and it was that simple to him. He was a young man, at heart, who wanted to be one of the guys who loved to play and was willing to do whatever was necessary.
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I used to watch ‘Death Becomes Her,’ and I knew I wanted to become Meryl Streep.
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There are many women who came before me who didn’t really have the same opportunities that I have had. That’s why I always wanted to be a great ambassador – not only today‘s generation – but for the women who really didn’t have a voice, but who paved the way for me.
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My grades put me in about 5,000th place in all of South Korea. If I kept going down that path, I would’ve become a successful man with a regular job. However, I was positive I’d be number one in the country as a rapper. So I asked my mother whether she wanted to have a son who was a first-place rapper, or a 5,000th-place student.
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I’m at peace with myself and where I am. In the past, I was always looking to see how everybody else was doing. I wasn’t competitive, I was comparative. I just wanted to be where everybody else was. Now I’ve gotten to an age when I am not comparing anymore.
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I’ve always wanted to play a Marvel baddie. I’m not sure I fit the mold, though. Like a powerful, extraordinary woman. Somebody with superpowers would be really fun, but I’m not sure how many middle-aged women they have in Marvel.
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I wanted stores that would feel like a comfortable room in my apartment, cozy and colorful and different.
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Boxing is a sport, but it’s also entertainment. I wanted to transcend the sport and be considered just not as a fighter, or a champion, but someone very special.
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I always wanted to show different sides of me, and I’m very happy to have done so.
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I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She’s someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That’s what I do, too, so I think that’s a great comparison.
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I’ve always wanted to be a top footballer since I was young.
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While my mother wanted me to be a musician, I wanted to become an electronic engineer.
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That’s what I wanted ‘Pirate Jenny’ to be: a queer, revolutionary fairy tale for the people that I love.
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I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in school, but I definitely didn’t have adequate time to reach my full potential as a student.
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I’ve always known I wanted to be an actor. It never crossed my mind to be anything else. I think I probably decided for sure when I saw ‘Sounder’.
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The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious… There was an integrity that people respected.
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I never wanted to be a model. My modelling career was nothing but a stepping stone to my acting career and that’s all I ever saw it as. A pointless rock in the river that has to be stepped on in order to get to the meaningful oasis of acting.
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My mom made me read a ton of books, so I got good at words and understood the English language. So when I started rapping, words were something I knew. I learned how to manipulate them so that I could say whatever I wanted to say.
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I think, after ‘Let Her Go,’ I wanted to show people that I don’t just write really sad love songs about my ex-girlfriend: that there’s another side to Passenger as well that’s a bit more up-tempo and more inclined to social commentary.
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I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn’t.
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When I perform as a solo, I think a lot about what I always wanted to do but have not done yet.
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I wanted to be like Bruce Jenner.
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I’m sometimes scared of everything that has happened to us. We didn’t think Desilu Productions would grow so big. We merely wanted to be together and have two children.
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My shoe has been going through evolution, and we having great feedback from the 1 to the 2 and the 2.5’s, so I think just consistency. The biggest thing I wanted to accomplish was a shoe that basketball players loved and felt like they have an advantage out of.
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My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.
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I used to get very angry as I was getting older, because my voice was breaking. So I’ve trained my voice so religiously through my teenage years, because I wanted to be able to hit the notes that those females hit. And I can, which is great.
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When I did ‘Don’t Look Back,’ I no longer had Time-Life looking over my shoulder, so I could kind of do it as I wanted, and it was like I was really correcting ‘Jane.’
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Success is different for everyone; everybody defines it in their own way, and that’s part of what we do in ‘Close Up’, finding what it was each person wanted to achieve and what their willingness to sacrifice for that was.
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I’m a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned to make that feeling work for me.
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Life doesn’t offer you promises whatsoever so it’s very easy to become, ‘Whatever happened to… ?’ It’s great to be wanted. I spent a few years not being wanted and this is better.
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None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
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When I first started out in the industry, I was 12 or whatever, and I wanted to be on something so bad, and I didn’t know what I was going to be on. At the time, I was in school, and I was working on drama and theatrical stuff, so I never thought that I’d end up going to comedy.
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I have always taken things slow, I never wanted to run through my musical journey, I wanted to enjoy every step and challenge.
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You know what has made me the happiest I’ve ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.
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I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately, when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.
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I wanted to be a man who travelled the world to make peace. I didn’t realise that most diplomats are megaphones for their governments.
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I wanted to make ‘Mexicana Hermosa.’ It’s a love song, but it isn’t. It’s more like a song as if Mexico was the Maria, the beautiful woman that I love.
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I think I had a kind of pause for insight in my 20s when I wasn’t in a relationship and my career wasn’t going the way I wanted it to go. I had time for reflection then.
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We all have something about ourselves that we’d change if we could in a perfect world, be it our body image, our financial status, our relationship, whatever. I wanted to talk about how nobody’s exempted from the realities of life and all those things.
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I suppose we’ll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn’t put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?
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I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.
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I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.
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Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.
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I’ve never wanted anybody to like me because I had long hair or short hair, or that they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I smile.
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I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.
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Liverpool is a club that needs no introduction. I was impatient to play at Anfield, I wanted to feel the atmosphere.
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I think by eighth grade I knew I wanted to be an actor. I’d done church plays and stuff, but my first actual acting class was in eighth grade. I was obsessed with it.
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Well, I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo done, I just never got around to doing it!
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I wanted to be a veterinarian and go to school in Boston. It didn’t quite work out that way, and I ended up joining the Navy as a suggestion of my big brother. It was really awesome – and I didn’t realize it at the time, -but provided a lot of leadership and followership teamwork opportunities.
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He was a very strict father, which in a way has helped me to become who I am today. He never pampered me, as he wanted me to live a normal life. No film magazines were allowed at home, and we weren’t allowed to watch any movies.
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I am an engineer by profession, but I knew I wanted to act. My parents always encouraged me, and when my father shifted to Mumbai for work for a brief while, I came along.
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For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.
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I was just so excited to have a child! I held him up like he was Simba in ‘The Lion King.’ I wanted to sing ‘The Circle of Life.’
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Did you ever hear of a kid playing accountant – even if they wanted to be one?
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I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.
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When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.
327
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
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I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.
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I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to dance, that’s what I’d do. Or design clothes. I think I’d throw myself into whatever I’m doing now. It’s not about abandoning what I was doing before, or giving up. It’s about knowing that if I die tomorrow, I lived the way I wanted to.
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For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.
333
I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.
334
I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV.
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All I ever wanted really, and continue to want out of life, is to give 100 percent to whatever I’m doing and to be committed to whatever I’m doing and then let the results speak for themselves. Also to never take myself or people for granted and always be thankful and grateful to the people who helped me.
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I decided to leave England because I wanted to try something new.
337
Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.
338
God is love. He didn’t need us. But he wanted us.
339
When I read Copland, I really wanted Stallone’s part.
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I wanted to play this part: the goofy rock and roller who can’t hang up his guitar when it’s clear to everyone else that he should.
342
I wanted to do comedy because I left Malaysia and went to America. I got bitten by the Western, idealist, opinionated, democracy bug.
343
I studied at Cathedral School, where a lot of kids go abroad after Class XII. But I was clear that I wanted to be an actress, and thus, even though I got 92% in my board exams, I applied only to Jai Hind College for Mass Communication and got in and completed my graduation.
344
My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of ‘the arts’ began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we’re the parents of Iggy Pop.
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I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.
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I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be… That being said, there’s more work to be done… I still want to change the world, absolutely.
349
If God wanted us to be naked, why did he invent sexy lingerie?
350
I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.
351
I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.
352
I played against men most of my life because our goal was that I wanted to reach the highest potential to be an absolute world champion.
353
I always, always wanted to be a writer.
354
When I met Michael Jordan on a basketball court at an athletic club – we hooped together in Chicago – he came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a song for his upcoming movie. I was like, ‘Yeah!’ I didn’t even ask what it was.
355
I was one of those kids who thought I could be the president of England when I grew up if I wanted to. Then I started acting and realized life is hard, and people are mean. And there’s no president of England, and I’m not British.
356
I wanted to be Joni Mitchell.
357
I grew up between Detroit and Ghana, and I had to make friends in an instant. It sharpened my wit, and also, just for my own sanity‘s sake, I felt like I wanted to entertain myself. So I’m going through all these experiences, and I ask myself, ‘Is this crazy? Is it? Wait, what’s so funny about this?’
358
After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.
359
I wanted to be positive. I have good sportsmanship. You leave everything on a good note, you just smile and shake hands.
360
To me, the U.S. Open was always the Grand Slam I wanted to win most.
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I played pretend games as a kid, army, whatever, but I never wanted to be an actor.
364
I was in New Zealand and met this girl. Her sister dared me to bungee jump, so I did! It was a spur-of-the-moment decision – I wanted to impress the girl, and it worked! We were in a relationship after that.
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I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.
367
I just want to make music, I don’t want people to talk about me. All I’ve ever wanted to do was sing. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I don’t want to be in people’s faces, you know, constantly on covers of magazine that I haven‘t even known I’m on.
368
I tried singing. I tried playing a musical instrument. I really wanted to be a musician, but I never could quite pull that off. I liked entertaining, but I was always drawn to some kind of technical work – some kind of honest labor.
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I wrote ‘Oath‘ for Cher Lloyd because there were really no best-friend anthems out there. Not only did she love it, she wanted me to rap on it, too!
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I got to experience soccer at the highest level at a young age; I decided I wanted to be part of that for as long as possible.
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I was always told at school that you had to have a back-up plan, but all I ever wanted to do was act. There was no plan B for me.
375
I have met almost everyone I’ve wanted to meet.
376
I wanted to do well academically. But it was equally important to do things in an effortless manner.
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I had this idea that being an introvert was a negative thing, that it had a negative connotation, and I really wanted, as a young person, to strive to be the life of the party and to be really outgoing and to have a million friends. And then I realized that an introvert isn’t a negative.
379
‘9 to 5 the Musical’ is perfect for anyone that’s ever wanted to string up their boss, which is almost all of us.
380
I am one of the lucky people in the world: I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.
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I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.
383
I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!
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Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
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At 16, I was drawing cartoons, and I wanted to carry on being a cartoonist.
390
My father used to say that it’s never too late to do anything you wanted to do. And he said, ‘You never know what you can accomplish until you try.’
391
I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.
392
I wanted to be a doctor. I was pre-med at school, and I actually even took the MCAT. My ultimate decision was that I didn’t love the work environment in a hospital.
393
I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.
394
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for ‘The Simpsons‘ who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
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You see me, I wanted to be fashion designer. I became fashion designer. So I think that everything is possible.
397
Stuart Broad’s 400th Test wicket did not come the way he would have wanted – Tom Latham chipped the ball to mid-wicket – but he will take it nonetheless. It is a fantastic achievement.
398
My personal fave is ‘The Japanese Wife’, because I think I achieved a lot of what I wanted to do. I wanted that Japanese minimalism in the film, which I managed to get somewhat.
399
I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman.
400
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
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I wanted to be a doctor in sports medicine; I was into sailing and all that sort of thing.
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If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn’t have given us arms.
405
I wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn’t want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges.
406
I went to a tiny little high school… I’d make my foray into Calgary if I wanted to see a movie or do something crazy.
407
Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.
408
I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it’s the sound of death approaching. Hoovering’s OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.
409
Violence against women is real and something I feel passionately about, and the gateway to all that is wolf whistling. It’s allowing a man to impose his will on a woman who is just trying to walk down the street and live her life. It’s all about unwanted versus wanted attention, and, of course, there’s a fine line.
410
I don’t want people to think like Roddy is John Legend now. I just felt like once I got to a certain point, that I wanted to expand musically.
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I was raised in an evangelical Methodist church. Evangelical meant that though you had been baptized and made a member of the church on Sunday morning, you still had to be ‘saved‘ on Sunday night. I wanted to be saved, but I did not think you should fake it.
413
I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
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I always imagined I could be what I wanted to be.
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I wanted to make people feel the same way I feel when I see a good movie.
418
I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too.
419
I think people of my generation became journalists – you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers – because we wanted to report the big stories.
420
When I did ‘Happy Birthday,’ I wrote the treatment for the video before I wrote the record. And once I wrote the video, I had a clear understanding of what I wanted; I created the soundtrack to that video.
421
I was a weirdo. I think I wanted to be liked, but I didn’t have the attention or bother to actually make an effort to be. I also think I had a different perception of what I needed to do to be liked.
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I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.
425
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That’s what I love.
426
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’ I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
427
I have seven kids. I want to watch my kids grow up. I want to participate in their activities. There’s a lot I wanted to accomplish beyond football. It all starts with making sure my heart’s healthy.
428
If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
429
My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.
430
When I see the Ten Most Wanted Lists… I always have this thought: If we’d made them feel wanted earlier, they wouldn’t be wanted now.
431
432
If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they’d get bored in a day. ‘Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here’s Matt researching in aisle six of his local library’. A few hours of that and they’d go home.
433
The fact I’m the third female Prime Minister, I never grew up believing my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.
434
I always wanted the fairy tale, but now I want someone who is a great partner.
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Finding ballet gave me passion for the first time in my life. I was always very shy and just wanted to fit in; I never daydreamed about what I wanted to be when I grew up. But dancing gave me a connection to my personality that made me grow.
440
Since we didn’t use guns, we wanted to make sure we could earn the ability to win the audience over by making it believable. A lot of what you do when you work out in that mode is use your mental energy.
441
Music makes us want to live. You don’t know how many times people have told me that they’d been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That’s the power music has.
442
I never, ever grew up as a young woman believing that my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.
443
I watched Tim Tebow and how he played and how he carried himself and the good that he did for the game on and off the field. I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
444
I was never a good student. I had to be dragged into kindergarten. It was hard to sit and listen to somebody talk. I wanted to be out, educated by experience and adventure, and I didn’t know how to express that.
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I always wanted to be a rock star. That was my childhood dream. That’s what I told everybody I was going to be when I grew up.
448
I never wanted to be a millionaire. I just wanted to live like one.
449
As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that’s what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.
450
451
I really wanted to buy a Range Rover. It was a big dream, and the day I bought it, I was very happy, but by evening, I was immune to it. That’s when I realized that excitement, if it’s happiness, is not in reaching the goal but in the process. Thus process trumps over realization.
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I wanted things that I couldn’t at times articulate.
456
When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to ‘crush‘ the Ants. These guys hated each other.
457
458
Growing up, my dad owned a restaurant in Washington, DC, and food was something I was passionate about. But when I finally got into it, I felt like it was so late in the game; that’s why I worked seven days a week at Craft and Mercer Kitchen. I wanted to see how far I could take it.
459
460
I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.
461
All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy.
462
I always knew I wanted to be a chef.
463
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I am a big fan of horror movies but I had never thought that I had wanted to act in one because I don’t think that actors get to do much in them. They’re usually just reacting.
467
I was lucky enough, when I was younger, to have the chance to do as much as possible, and I found what I wanted to do. I did swimming, gymnastics, kickboxing and the one that took off more than the others was acting.
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I wanted passionately to be a priest.
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I decided that what I really wanted to do was go off and paint.
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I wanted to be a positive force in the world.
474
I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.
475
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I wanted to show everyone that I can be… romantic one day. I can be sexy the other day. I can be crazy. I can be serious. I can be boss. I can be feminist, and I still don’t lose my way to be, you know?
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I have always wanted to learn the piano, but because I travel so much, I can never get any consistency of lessons. So everywhere I go, if I can find a piano, even if it is in the lobby of a hotel or something, I go on YouTube and pick some songs to learn.
480
I’m a very comfortable and happy-go-lucky old man. I never wanted to be great, because I’d just get worried.
481
I wanted to go to drama school, but when I got the part in ‘Falling,’ I got an agent, so it seemed a good idea to work. I always did a lot of singing and dancing, so I am glad it worked out that way. I would like to study stage acting at some point, though.
482
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I always wanted to be a princess like Cinderella.
484
Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.
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There’s a great tradition in storytelling that’s thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that’s really what I wanted to do.
489
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The fact was, Ford kept stumbling around. I didn’t want him in the White House. I wanted Carter in, and I had a forum of 20 million people watching.
491
I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.
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493
I started EWF because I had a vision, and music was playing in my head that I wanted to bring through. What I had in mind was exactly what Earth, Wind & Fire became.
494
I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.
495
I like having my picture taken and being a glamorous person. Sometimes when I find myself getting impatient, I just remember the times I cried my eyes out because nobody wanted to take my picture at the Trocadero.
496
An ancient dictum says that when Zeus wanted to destroy someone, he would first drive him mad.
497
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
498
My dad farmed, my granddad was a farmer. I wanted to be a farmer.
499
500
We read advertisements… to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready – even eager – to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it.
501
I grew up watching ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ and I started watching ‘The Vampire Diaries‘ when I was auditioning because I wanted to get a feel of it… then I totally got hooked!
502
I caved in to what people wanted me to do. I thought that they weren’t going to like me if I didn’t.
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504
I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work.
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I got blessed from my mom. She’s the personality; she’s the one who smiled, so I took on part of her, and who also wanted to help and save the world. Then I took on part of my dad, who is tough.
509
Faith, family, academics and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers. As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted.
510
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
511
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513
I’ve always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.
514
I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.
515
I wanted to learn everything I could about what it takes to be a great chef. It was a turning point for me.
516
Even at my lowest point, when I’ve wanted to give up, I know that I have to believe in myself because I’m all that I have.
517
I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.
518
I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.
519
520
Hello this is Glozell! Is you OK? Is you? Good, cause I wanted to know!
521
I began to discover that, in addition to her stunning achievements, there were flaws as there would be in any person’s life. I wanted to tell Madam‘s story in an honest, frank way.
522
523
You could make any song sound creepy if you wanted. It’s all about the inflection.
524
All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.
525
I’ve always had confidence. It came because I have lots of initiative. I wanted to make something of myself.
526
If I wanted to play soccer, I’d step out on that soccer field like I’m the best soccer player. Even though I don’t have that much experience, I always try to have that type of confidence in myself just to make people believe it.
527
I went to a nutritionist; my diet is pretty clean, but I wanted to get some more knowledge and understanding in some areas. My two favorite things, Clif Bars and lattes, she just destroyed in our first meeting. Coffee is fine, but soy is the most genetically modified food that we eat.
528
529
I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There’s an expression that I get to have in acting that I can’t consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.
530
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
531
Kobe is probably an idol for so many players. He was such a great player so you wanted to be like Kobe. He’s a legend that never dies.
532
I was very unsure about what I wanted to do in high school.
533
Anything I wanted to do and achieve has not been influential in my life, but my failures have.
534
I am bipolar, and I am proud. And that is why I wanted to write a book. To shine a light on mental illness, to be vulnerable about the days I let it take control and paid dearly for it, and to tell anyone fighting a similar battle: You are not alone. You are not broken.
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If you’re a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it’s a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn’t even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn’t have an audience.
538
Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.
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542
Especially as a title-holder, you can do great things with charities, because people suddenly care about what you have to say. I wanted to make a difference, which is why I created the Queen of the Universe pageant. I want to change all of those stigmas in the beauty pageant world.
543
I’ve never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish.
544
The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.
545
I wanted to be a soccer player.
546
By middle school, I said to myself that it’s time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.
547
548
I was a fan of DMC but I was captivated by Run’s style, I wanted to be the man. As a kid, when somebody got that kinda influence over a child… you know how strong that can be.
549
I wasn’t close to my father, but I wanted to be all my life. He had a funny sense of humor, and he laughed all the time – good and loud, like I do. He was a gay Irish gentleman and very good-looking. And he wanted to be close to me, too, but we never had much time together.
550
Have you ever wondered why the rich and privileged care about, or even bother with, the gift bag? Because they don’t need this stuff. If they wanted it, they could afford to buy it, without blinking. But they love the gift bag, beyond reason.
551
I never wanted to be the great guy or the colorful guy or the interesting guy. I wanted to be the guy who won titles.
552
553
To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games – nothing like saving the world.
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557
My father is Italian, and I never met my paternal grandparents. The family name was ‘Caroselli’ and it was changed in the mid ’50s. I think they wanted to assimilate, which was pretty common, although I love the name ‘Caroselli.’
558
I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.
559
Maybe it’s because I was an only child, but I’ve always wanted kids.
560
When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it – why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the ’90s – ‘Nick of Time’ and other songs I was surprised I came up with – it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say.
561
562
I think we’re always doing something for teenagers and youngsters because BTS originally performed itself as a socially conscious band. We always wanted to sell our performances like we did with our debut.
563
I wanted to model when I was younger.
564
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566
I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.
567
Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that’s why, even not being an Olympic champion, I have such a huge following around the world.
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When I first started out in this music industry, I was most concerned with freedom. Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to.
571
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I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life – and I became that woman.
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When I began my career as a flight attendant, I was a 21-year-old with a B.A. in English and stars in her eyes. I wanted to see every city in the world. I wanted to have adventures that, I hoped, would fuel a writing career some day.
575
I’ve always wanted to race cars, ever since I was a young boy, as I think a lot of guys have.
576
There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I realized that my father wanted me to be a loner. I decided, ‘It’s okay to be an introvert, but I don’t want to be a loner. I want a few other people in my life.’
577
Every little kid has always wanted to be a race car driver. This gets some of that out.
578
My senior year I felt I put a lot more time into the offseason to make a lot more happen. Going out my senior year, I felt like I did everything I wanted to do and more. I felt like I dominated and I feel comfortable going to the next level and that I’m ready.
579
580
As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.
581
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Most of my teachers wanted to send me to the principal’s office. But my fourth-grade teacher once put her arms around me and said, ‘You sure write well.’ And I’ve had good penmanship until this day. She was the only one who ever said anything nice to me. That’s the kind of motivation that students need.
583
I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.
584
Michael Jordan was going to do whatever was ever necessary, and certainly I can say without question, he was going to achieve and stop playing whenever he wanted to stop playing.
585
