100 Quotes About Longing

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. Haruki Murakami

I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses...the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you in the final hour of my life...to lie in your arms as I take my last breath. Lisa Kleypas

I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds— but I think of you always in those intervals. Salvador Plascencia

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie. Michael Ondaatje

And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart–knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever–the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. J.L. Carr

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you. Jeffrey Eugenides

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

A pine tree standeth lonely In the North on an upland bare; It standeth whitely shrouded With snow, and sleepeth there. It dreameth of a Palm tree Which far in the East alone, In the mournful silence standeth On its ridge of burning stone. Heinrich Heine

The problem with stealing the magician's assistant from a carnival was that you were always waiting for her to disappear. He expected her to vanish. She had in fact, multiple times, before Simon was born, and just after, too..Daniel wanted to be worried for, wanted to be missed without doing any of the leaving that missing demanded. When Paulina left, he counted breaths, and thought constantly of the disappearing box. The reappearing was the most important part of the trick. Eventually he stopped living in fear that she wouldn't come back. The more pressing concern was that she was cutting herself in two. . Erika Swyler

The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another but they are so distant so very far apart that they cannot feel the warmth of each other even though they are made of burning. Beth Revis

...the waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love. Orhan Pamuk

Please, always look at me this way. Stare into my eyes and see me for who I am and know that there is nothing more than this. When the world calls things into question, you need not question me because I will always be here for you. Renea Mason

Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the stars! Olive Higgins Prouty

I smile. things taken for granted have a way of catching you offguard when you least expect it, and then you're taken by what the portuguese calls saudade, a sense of longing for something, someone not there anymore. Yeow Kai Chai

I do not want to eat or drink, or i will lose the taste of you in my mouth Jandy Nelson

I still wonder what made him leave. Were they my demons or his own? Vaishnavi Hajari

Had almost forgotten the wet brush of your kisses… soft as April snowflakes John J. Geddes

She was a music I no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished. Marilynne Robinson

You can love someone so much… But you can never love someone as much as you miss them. John Green

I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater. Lying awake, I tried to recall all my best memories of her–to freeze her in my mind so I wouldn’t forget her–but instead of birthdays and happy times I kept remembering things like how a few days before she was killed she’d stopped me halfway out the door to pick a thread off my school jacket. For some reason, it was one of the clearest memories I had of her: her knitted eyebrows, the precise gesture of her reaching out to me, everything. Several times too–drifting uneasily between dreaming and sleep– I sat up suddenly in bed at the sound of her voice speaking clearly in my head, remarks she might conceivably have made at some point but that I didn’t actually remember, things like Throw me an apple, would you? and I wonder if this buttons up the front or the back? and This sofa is in a terrible state of disreputableness. . Donna Tartt

I yearned for everything long gone. Osamu Dazai

By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge the sun seemed to move from a cheerful daytime yellow to an early-evening gold; painful how the gold light hit the riverbanks, rich and sorrowful, drawing from Amy some longing, a craving for joy. . Elizabeth Strout

...that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, who understands what hurts you. Lysley Tenorio

If we could imagine, while we live them, to what mundane moments nostalgia manages to stick itself... Luigina Sgarro

I had this theory. It was based loosely on the unremarkable observation that the old are always looking back with longing while the young, with the same longing, look ahead. One man remembers what the other imagines. Thomas Lynch

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost. Mohsin Hamid

We can't stop reading. Compulsively we find ourselves reading significance into dreams (we construct a science upon it); into tea-leaves and the fall of cards. We look up at the shifting vapours in the sky, and see faces, lost cities, defeated armies. Isolated in the dark, with nothing to hear and no surfaces to touch, we hallucinate reading-matter. Our craving becomes generalized — for 'the meaning of life'. If we lived alone in a featureless desert we should learn to place the individual grains of sand in a moral or aesthetic hierarchy. We should long to find the greatest grain of sand in the world, and even (in order to find a fixed point of orientation in time as well as in space) the all-time greatest grain of sand; the grain of sand whose discovery changed our whole understanding of grains of sand for ever. . Michael Frayn

Sufre mas el que espera siempreque aquel que nunca espero a nadie? Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone? Pablo Neruda

She was lost in her longing to understand. Unknown

When i remember your namei know you are my hope.for what ?not for love..'cause i know you can't love me.but i know you are my hope for.. Life.Just remembering your smile..i know you are my worldyou shaping my world that became like this..you are my story Not to be told, But to remember..i love youand.. I miss you nowi miss my worldi miss your face, your smile and your voice I miss you more than anyone that I've ever met- For Enno Indi WP- . Yulianto Eko P

... which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace. Marcel Proust

Her tears still lay, unattended, on my bosom... I wouldn't wipe them, for she might stop paying me visits. Aporva Kala

I will look at you in the darkness of the night, where there are no colours to fill my eyes and where there are no frames that would define your shape. In the silence, I will seek the warmth of the night in your memories and sleep holding tight those orphan dreams. O dear, amidst the cloudy skies, where did you disappear? Preeth Nambiar

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. Seawaterbegs the pearl to break its shell.and the lily, how passionatelyit needs some wild darling! Atnight, I open the window and askthe moon to come and press itsface against mine. Breathe intome. Close the language door andopen the lovers window. The moonwon’t use the door, only the window. Jalaluddin Rumi

... this longing inside me that never goes away, must be a poem...must be you ... John Geddes

It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn't been smoking much and it wasn't headlights — but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety. Thomas Pynchon

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

Name me no names for my disease, With uninforming breath; I tell you I am none of these, But homesick unto death –Homesick for hills that I had known, For brooks that I had crossed, ... Before I met this flesh and bone And followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last, Yet name no name of ills. Say only, "Here is where he passed, Seeking again those hills. Witter Bynner

Last night, lost in spaces between star–bays and lakes of clouds, I tossed and turned looking for you John Geddes

You can't speak to him, he said, if you speak to him, if you give any sign to him at all, he will come back; he has to stop existing for you. Garth Greenwell

Until the longing came again, like the longing that you hear in the whistle of a train that is going far away. But the longing isn't really in the whistle, the longing is in you–for the wonder and the loveliness that is in the world, and everywhere. Meindert DeJong

And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday. James Joyce

Our deepest longings and the question of who we are intended to be cuts us in half, dividing us within ourselves. At critical stages and significant moments in the course of life, we sink with the weight of our own questions; we drown in our own psyche in order to reach a subtle ground that secretly sustains our every breath. In that sense, all separations, splits, and conflicts are evidence of a unity we long to find, both individually and collectively. Michael Meade

Not that time alone with Ingrid was something to wish away. She'd chosen him. Given herself to him, and even though he couldn't claim her in the human way, she was still his. Passing the day and night in the quiet town home was giving him a taste of his fantasy, sweet as meringue and just as easily dissolved. Page Morgan

We are homesick most for the places we have never known. Carson McCullers

A river starts by longing for the ocean... Will Advise

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure. Cornelia Funke

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing. Kahlil Gibran

I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you. Harper Lee

Some people never say the words ‘I love you’, for like a child they’re longing to be told. Paul Simon

I missed the sound of her shuffling her homework while I listened to music on her bed. I missed the cold of her feet against my legs when she climbed into bed. I missed the shape of her shadow where it fell across the page of my book. I missed the smell of her hair and the sound of her breath and my Rilke on her nightstand and her wet towel thrown over the back of her desk chair. It felt like I should be sated after having a whole day with her, but it just made me miss her more. Maggie Stiefvater

Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there.. Train

I couldn't take my eyes off him. Like a desert wanderer afraid of mirages, I gazed at my oasis, but he was real. Laura Whitcomb

Without turning on the light, I went to my bed and lay down, my arm thrown across the mattress, my hand aching because Grace wasn't underneath it Maggie Stiefvater

Benvolio: What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours? Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short. William Shakespeare

He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him. Lisa See

I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in the sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occured to them to do anything less then perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I Belonged among them, that I was one of them, that I'd been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in teh meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among the swans. Richard Yates

And there you have it...if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life. Karen Marie Moning

It seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would bring back the scene, - not of his repulse and rejection the day before but the looks, the actions of the day before that. He went along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people, but never seeing them, -almost sick with longing for that one half-hour-that one brief space of time when she clung to him, and her heart beat against his-to come once again. Elizabeth Gaskell

Till then I wasn't alive, I longed for you like the love sick moon pulls the tide Corinne Bailey Rae

You can miss a person you've never known. Jodi Picoult

But she had dreamed of being his for too long. He had quite ruined her for a marriage of convenience. She wanted everything from him: his mind, his body, his name and, most of all, his heart. Sarah MacLean

I kept it to remind me that although there is evil, there is sometimes beauty and light. You, Jillian. You were always my light. Karen Marie Moning

I miss you every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of everyday. Shanece

I know she is coming I know she will look And that is the longing And this is the book. Leonard Cohen

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

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen. Mark Haddon

And how do you really feel? Like I'll never recover. Like I'll never draw another breath without half of it being a wish for him. Jane Seville

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 restlessness and the longing, like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train. Except that the longing isn't really in the whistle–it is in you. Meindert DeJong

But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass. Unknown

Looking from the window at the fantastic light and colour of my glittering fairy-world of fact that holds no tenderness, no quietude, I long suddenly for peace, for understanding. Daphne Du Maurier

...and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hand on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him- Clare Audrey Niffenegger

She gave me this look — she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around. Haruki Murakami

The saints are little pieces of mystical Christ, sick of love for union. The wife of youth, that wants her husband some years, and expects he shall return to her from oversea lands, is often on the shore; every ship coming near shore is her new joy; her heart loves the wind that shall bring him home. She asks at every passenger news: "Oh! saw ye my husband? What is he doing? When shall he come? Is he shipped for a return?" Every ship that carrieth not her husband, is the breaking of her heart. What desires hath the Spirit and Bride to hear, when the husband Christ shall say to the mighty angels, "Make you ready for the journey; let us go down and divide the skies, and bow the heaven: I will gather my prisoners of hope unto me; I can want my Rachel and her weeping children no longer. Behold, I come quickly to judge the nations." The bride, the Lamb's wife, blesseth the feet of the messengers that preach such tidings, "Rejoice, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments; thy King is coming." Yea, she loveth that quarter of the sky, that being rent asunder and cloven, shall yield to her Husband, when he shall put through his glorious hand, and shall come riding on the rainbow and clouds to receive her to himself. Samuel Rutherford

A line from The Picture of Dorian Gray kept running through my head- a line which, I thought, might have been written by the Devil himself:" The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. Syrie James

Verlange. The process feels like crossing a border on a one-way ticket, from a state of innocence, to one of irreconcilable knowledge. You are in a new country. But no one wants to live here. The visas are assigned by some obscure system nobody can comprehend. Karina Szczurek

The correspondence testifies to the frailty of human longings, to the process of how something precious can turn fatal, a reality become illusion. We are reminded that love should be cherished when it comes your way, because no matter in what form it arrives, carrying no matter what baggage in its fragile beautiful hands, you should welcome it and protect it from the harshness of this world. Karina Szczurek

I couldn't reach him from here even if I tried. Unknown

…The love of his youth Appeared as in a dream And this ageing lover Went mad with love. The youth robbed him of Reason and his chastity. In pursuit of his Beloved, mad, deranged, He was from kith and kin estranged. The fire of the rose’s cheek Burnt the nightingale’s heart; The laughing flame Tormented the devoted moth… Hafiz Shirazi

Please wait for me. Don't have all the fun now. Don't fill up on other people who aren't me. Don't ruin your appetite. Caitlin Moran

This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared. Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back. Unknown

I hated longing. I hated it almost as much as I hated pining. It sapped the mind of good judgment, filled the heart with achiness, and distracted the vagina from other potential conquests. Penny Reid

He thought there must be a place, like a dead-letter office, where everyone's longing went, yearning that was sent out, day after day. He thought it must collect somewhere, in a dank basement room, the mass of it rising and rising like water, and with no end in sight. Jane Hamilton

In the Village IIIWho has removed the typewriter from my desk, so that I am a musician without his pianowith emptiness ahead as clear and grotesqueas another spring? My veins bud, and I am sofull of poems, a wastebasket of black wire. The notes outside are visible; sparrows willline antennae like staves, the way springs were, but the roofs are cold and the great grey riverwhere a liner glides, huge as a winter hill, moves imperceptibly like the accumulatingyears. I have no reason to forgive herfor what I brought on myself. I am past hating, past the longing for Italy where blowing snowabsolves and whitens a kneeling mountain rangeoutside Milan. Through glass, I am waitingfor the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginningof spring, but my hands, my work, feel strangewithout the rusty music of my machine. No wordsfor the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mangeof old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds. Derek Walcott

The RemoteI often think about youwhen I’m lying alone inmy room with my mouthopen and the remotelost somewhere in the bed. Leonard Cohen

What, and end up like you? Wistfully recalling a lover from long ago? Please. Elizabeth Carlton

All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me. C.s. Lewis

Love ... was part imagination, its web spun as much in the dark lonely separated evenings of longing as in the shared times together. Niall Williams

I didn't want this dance to end, or Kiggs to let go of my hand. I didn't want him to turn his eyes away, or live any other moment than this one. Rachel Hartman

The sensation I had experienced vanished like smoke from a snuffed candlem, leaving behind wisps of nameless longing. Julianne Donaldson

What I did not know was how longing could store itself away in the hollows of one's bones and then one day without warning flood out. J.M. Coetzee