“Desire, by (my) definition, is unprepared; it has not been equipped or instructed or even inspired by the past. It has nothing substantive to recollect or recycle. It could never be, like perverse history, the history of the future; or a story about how history will reward our intentions. It is not a form of prospecting or divination; nor is it a form of wishing as a conventionally transitive act. You can’t exactly wish to be surprised because this would mitigate against the experience of being surprised.”

“So the history of my desiring self would also be a history of pleasurable experiences unwarranted by expectation. It would not, therefore, be a history of my achieved intentions; nor could it be a success story in terms of obligations met and ambitions secured (it would have no truck with the self as predictor or reader of omens and portents). It would be a story that would disfigure my wish (or my talent) for coherent narrative. It would be a story about how my stories were interrupted or broke down or didn’t hang together. It would, to all intents and purposes, be a history of accidents and anomalies; all convincingly pleasurable but of uncertain consequence. Not a history of intentions realigned by circumstance, but a story of lucky coincidences, for which no credit could be taken by anyone (or anything), and from which no resentment could ensue.”

“Need makes perfect biological sense. The demand for love — however exorbitant, however unconscious in sources, and however ironic its consequences — is a consoling and exhilarating and sensible intention for people like us who have heard and overheard so much about love. Need and the demand for love are indeed the queer species of prediction we are born into. But desire is wanting as a species of luck.”