Longing Quotes

“I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

“At the first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish, All the secrets that slept deep within me came awake, Everything was transformed and enchanted, everything made sense.”
― Hermann Hesse

“I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery.”
― Craig Thompson, Blankets

“The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.”
― Tobias Wolff, Old School

“I’d like to have enough time and quiet
To think about absolutely nothing,
To not ever feel myself living,
To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Living a life somewhere else in your mind is nothing more than being a prisoner where you are.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The very people you trusted most could become like strangers in their longing...”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The Secret of the Indian

“Would that thy love, beloved, had less trust in me, that it might be more anxious!”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“People often miss things that don't exist--miss things that were but are not anymore.”
― Sarah McCoy, The Baker's Daughter

“I wonder
if you ever read my poems
and wish
they were written
for you.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“...my body has become
another country
and I feel like an unemployed
illegal alien
how will I survive
where I do not belong
I belong with you”
― Patrick Califia-Rice

“There were times when I would forget her, though they were rare, and it would be for a time as though she had never existed; and then some passing girl's inadvertent gesture, or an accidental profile, or a hat like hers, would restore her, and restore the suffering too, and I would long again, somehow, to encounter or to see her.”
― Alfred Hayes, In Love

“What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trism lived in Liir's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress habillards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trism's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing.”
― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

“But sex as a physical act is merely athletics, a momentary relief. What it needs to be powerful is desire, and the strongest element of desire is longing. It's in the work. Desider-, sidus: from the stars. The longing that reaches beyond space and time.”
― Rosemary Sullivan, Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession

“The waltz held the feeling you get when you finish a well-loved book. It left me longing for something I couldn't name.”
― Louise Miller, The City Baker's Guide to Country Living

“How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector

“Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Nondum amabam, et amare amabam”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.”
― Elizabeth Wein, The Pearl Thief

“Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?”
― André Gide, Urien's Voyage

“In all my wanderings through this world of care,
In all my griefs -- and God has given my share --
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose:
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return -- and die at home at last.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another's will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life's creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.”
― Judy Chicago

“Last night, lost in spaces between star—bays and lakes of clouds, I tossed and turned looking for you”
― john j geddes

“I call him my friend, but in the last year it's seemed too casual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest. If only he was with me now! But of course, I don't want that. I don't want him in the arena where he'd be dead in a few days. I just... I just miss him. And I hate being so alone. Does he miss me? He must.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed?”
― Francesca Lia Block, Witch Baby

“Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.”
― Francesca Lia Block, The Waters & the Wild

“Jack is somewhere in this city, right now.
The thought was like passing by a house where someone was grilling in the back yard. You could smell it, but it wasn't yours, and you couldn't just barge into their home and demand a burger, no matter how your mouth watered.”
― Jane Seville, Zero at the Bone

“privation is the cause of appetite”
― Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings

“30 cents, two transfers, love

Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone.”
― Richard Brautigan

“One spirit remained unaware of his presence, staring at Miss Parker with such longing that he reluctantly decided to let it stay. The spirit, a hollow-eyed girl with ringlets and clothing from long past, reached toward Percy, wishing to touch her. Alexi understood. When left to her own devices, Miss Parker was neither shy nor awkward; she was radiant.”
― Leanna Renee Hieber, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker