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

“Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

“كل الحاجات بتفكرني
بعيون حيرتها تحيرني
والذكرى مش بتصبرني
تمر صورتك اتبسم
الابتسامه تعذبني
كل الحاجات حواليا تدور
زي الحيطان بتداري النور
وقلبي من بعد الطيران
ما حيلته الا جناح مكسور
دلوقتي مهما اقول الآه
وانت بعيد مين يسمعني



كل الحاجات الا عيونك ممكن انسى
كل الحاجات من حواليا عارفة وحاسة
ضاع الونس يا قمر غايب
بعدك ماليش اي حبايب
دلوقتي حتى بخاف حزني يبعد عني
كل الحاجات كانت تضحك لما اقابلك
لا عرفت نفسي من قبلك ولا من بعدك
قبلك ماكانليش ولا حاجة
بعدك سنيني محتاجه
ياريت تشوف دمعه صوتي لما أغني”
― عبدالرحمن الأبنودي

“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

“And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of "heat" one could say "sex";- sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church, - then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as a primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“‎"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

“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

“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

“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

“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 felt a wave of longing roll out of me, but not the way it usually did, diffuse and sad. This was hopeful, as though it had been coaxed out by a whispered promise.”
― Michele Jaffe, Ghost Flower

“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

“Clairey knew well that it was one thing to occupy his bed, quite another to occupy his heart.”
― Tracy Winegar, Good Ground

“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, Amy and Isabelle