Longing Quotes

“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.”
― Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings

“Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."

- from "Dimpellumpzki”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

“We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.”
― Kamila Shamsie

“I do,” Drew admitted, his eyes devouring my body appreciatively. “But with you…I want so much more, Summer. So much more than you’re willing to give me.” He paused, “Every single touch, every single look you give me, I cherish.”
― Kailin Gow, Perfect Summer

“Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum.”
― Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

“The loneliest days are the ones where you keep company with someone you love who can’t hear you.”
― Holly Robinson, Sleeping Tigers

“‎"It always seemed somehow less real here... a really detailed dream, but sort of washed out, like a thin watercolor. Softer, somehow, even with their electric light and engines and everything. I guess it was because there was hardly any magic.”
― Garth Nix, Lirael

“Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.”
― Philip Sington, The Valley of Unknowing

“... this longing inside me that never goes away, must be a poem...must be you ...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.”
― Juliet Marillier, Heart's Blood

“For all her culture's attention to the physical, it seemingly has little to salve the creatural anguish of losing someone else's body, their touch, their heat, their oceanic heart...she doesn't want another body, she wants the body she loved, the forceps scar across his cheek that she traced with her hand, his penis, its elegant sweep to the side, the preternaturally soft skin. One wants what one has loved, not the idea of love.”
― Michelle Latiolais, Widow: Stories

“It isnt for want
of something to say--
something to tell you--

something you should know--
but to detain you--
keep you from going--

feeling myself here
as long as you are--
as long as you are”
― Cid Corman

“Desiderium sinus cordis”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“My dear boy, looking like a thing has little to do with being a thing. Be the thing first, and you will grow to resemble it.”
― Liam Perrin, Sir Thomas the Hesitant and the Table of Less Valued Knights

“We have it in our head that if we fill our stomachs, we’ll fill our hearts.”
― Kate Wicker, Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body

“She had been his talisman, his cure for the insecurities and worries that he knew deep down didn't really matter, but somehow had always managed to get the best of him.”
― Erik Tomblin, The Space Between

“Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet.”
― David Mitchell , The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“Hunger of the heart is much stronger than hunger for food.”
― Amanda Comer

“The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.”
― Peter Høeg, Tales of the Night

“We clean our plates, yet we’re still famished—starving for something other than food.”
― Kate Wicker, Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body

“He was what the egotistical part of me had always longed for: danger, sexiness, popularity, style, unpredictability. The kind of man who'd always keep me guessing. Just one night with him and i'd already started to wonder if perhaps i'd spent the last two years in a comfortable coma.”
― Lucy Robinson, The Greatest Love Story of All Time

“Some part of me remembers what snow is, but this is the first time my new mind has seen it. It softens the crumbled sidewalks and turns rusty rooftops white. It’s beautiful. It crunches under my feet as I move toward the house, longing to understand.”
― Isaac Marion, Boarded Window

“I really should be studying now, but you're much more important to me than a .50 calibre machine gun.”
― Kara Martinelli, My Very Dearest Anna

“The good news is that there is one kind of food you can never have too much of. The best way to fully recover from a food addiction or body-image problem is to fill up on the Lord.”
― Kate Wicker, Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body

“Did you know, that one night; one moonless, clear, shining night; with the shadowy silhouettes of trees crisp against the star-filled sky – I, on the high, level terrace of my flat, stretched out my hand! Against all odds and possibilities of unbelief and grief – a life of searchings, discontent, and a nagging sense of unreality… A spider-web intuition of a spread-out, intricate illusion that wilfully withheld the truth from me.”
― Radhika Mukherjee, Our Particular Shadows

“Only now, in rhythmic waves, was she struck by her stupidity, her blindness, her estheronautiness, and, above all, her longing, the insult of the power of her longing, and she knew very well that is was these shortcomings that had made her so eager to interweave in his story the threads of her secret dreams of candor and of painful, purifying honesty; of a generous togetherness in which everything was possible. For a moment, with all that had been spun and stabbed and defiled within her, her face took on the expression of a frightened, abandoned girl who lunges out to bite, who lives unimaginably close to the skin’s surface, ready to be drawn out like a final plan of retreat.”
― David Grossman, Her Body Knows

“They should not clench their fists,
it’s my longing that’s drawing me near to them;
they should not stand there full of rage,
my longing is timidly drawing near to them;
they should not be ready to pounce like vicious dogs,
as if they wanted to tear my longing to shreds;
they should not threaten with broad sleeves,
that pains my longing.
Why have they suddenly changed?
As great and deep is my longing.
No matter how difficult, no matter how menacing:
I must reach them and I’m already there.”
― Robert Walser, Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser

“You make me thirsty, Promethea, my river, you make me eternally thirsty, my water. As if I had spent my life in an old house of dried mud, so dry myself that I could not even thirst, until yesterday. And suddenly yesterday, the dusty floor of my old house burst open and while I was still dozing away my parched existence, drop by drop I heard the music of coolness awaken the thirst under my dry soul. And leaning over the dark shaft of my life, I saw my childhood springs unearthed. Is that always how (by accident) we rediscover Magdalenian riches?”
― Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea

“kevään sanansaattaja satakieli
kaipaus sen äänessä”
― Sapfo, Iltatähti, häälaulu