Longing Quotes

“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

“The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Witch, do this for me,
Find me a moon
made of longing.
Then cut it sliver thin,
and having cut it,
hang it high
above my beloved's house,
so that she may look up
tonight
and see it,
and seeing it, sigh for me
as I sigh for her,
moon or no moon.”
― Clive Barker i Days of Magic Nights of War i

“There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
and the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At
night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language door and
open the lovers window. The moon
won’t use the door, only the window.”
― Rumi

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

- from "Dimpellumpzki”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

“You just know something is amiss, when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It's an absence--a loss of a heartbeat.”
― Nadège Richards, Burning Bridges

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

“Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“But in spite of my great desire for intimacy, I've always been a loner. Perhaps when the longing for connection is as strong as it is in me, when the desire is for something so deep and true, one knows better than to try. One sees that this is not the place for that.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Never Change

“The ocean exerts an inexorable pull over sea people wherever they are-in a bright-lit, inland city or the dead center of a desert-and when they feel the tug there is no choice but somehow to reach it and stand at its immense, earth-dissolving edge, straightaway calmed.”
― Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth

“The shadow-past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus”
― Franz Kafka

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

“Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!’ said Jimmy longingly. ‘How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night!”
― Enid Blyton, Mr Galliano's Circus

“My beloved has arrived, but rather than greeting him,
All I can do is bite the corner of my apron with a blank expression-
What an awkward woman am I.

My heart has longed for him as hugely and openly as a full moon
But instead I narrow my eyes, and my glance to him
Is sharp and narrow as the crescent moon.

But then, I'm not the only one who behaves this way.
My mother and my mother's mother were as silly and stumbling as I am when they were girls...

Still, the love from my heart is overflowing,
As bright and crimson as the heated metal in a blacksmith's forge.”
― Kim Dong Hwa, The Color of Earth

“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

“Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pull
back the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics,
human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatness
of this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewn
across the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—my
soul purpose.”
― Brian Bowers, Shadows Chasing Light

“You think embracing the longing while waiting for the right man is impossible? Well obviously you didn't get the memo.”
― Osayi Osar-Emokpae, Impossible Is Stupid

“Kavita’s arms are still outstretched, but they hold nothing. After the metal gate clangs shut behind them, Kavita can still hear Usha’s piercing wail echoing inside.”
― Shilpi Somaya Gowda