what is the difference?

what is the difference between 想 and 要？

Here in a nutshell is what I read: Xiǎng 想 means "would like" but cannot be followed by a concrete object while it can be followed by a verb. - Wǒ xiǎng hē chá = I would like to drink tea Yào 要 means "want" and when used to ask for something is like a direct command. - Wǒ yào hē chá = I want to drink tea As softer way to request something is to say xiǎng yào 想要 which means "would like". - Wǒ xiǎng yào hē yīdiǎn chá = I would like some tea, please Reference: "Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammer" by Qin Xue Herzberg, pg. 94-96

In addition, 想 can be used interchangably with 觉得 to mean "I think (something)" i.e. when stating your feelings. When 想 is followed by a noun, it means 'to miss (noun)'. 要 can also be used of people making requests：这不是我要的 this isn't what I asked for. Both characters have many meanings. To not type them out here, I attached some links to these characters in the Nciku dictionary. You will notice under each entry that for each different meaning of those two characters, there should be a synonym in Chinese in [brackets]. Like this, you could better understand how Chinese likes to shorten multiple-character words down to one character, of which could carry the meaning of many different multiple-character words. 要：http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E8%A6%81/49354 想：http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%83%B3/1316659